m 



H.. ' •illflr 



nil 




BEAUTIES 



SELECTED 



FROM THE WRITINGS 



OP 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY, 

AUTHOR OF " CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM EATER," ETC. 




NEW YORK: 

PUT3LISFIED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON. 

BOSTON: H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 

Cambribge: S^Iic Hitiersibe Press. 

1877. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by 

TiCKNOB AND FIELDS, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusette. 






PREFACE. 



The writings of Thomas de Quincey occupy more 
than a score of volumes. 

Comparatively few persons have leisure for the pe- 
reusal of so many miscellaneous works by the same au- 
thor ; yet, all who pretend to a knowledge of English 
Literature sliould be familiar with the chefs-d'oeuvre 
of De Quincey — one of the greatest masters of the 
English Language. 

His autobiography, scattered through many volumes, 
is here collected and so arranged as to give a com- 
plete view of his early life and his peculiar charac- 
ter. The other selections from his various works, 
furnish striking examples of the pathetic and the 
humorous, the quaint and the ludicrous, the serious 
and the sublime. The miscellaneous nature of De 
Quincey's writings renders them specially fit for this 
kind of eclecticism. It is hoped that the present 
volume will prove an acceptable addition to our cur- 
rent literature, and induce a desire for a still farther 
acquaintance with the elegant author. 



CONTENTS 



DE QUINCEY'S EARLY LIFE 
I. The De Quinceys 



n. Childhood 

III. Introduction to the World of Strife . 

rV. I AM Introduced to the Warfare of a Public School 
V. I Enter the World . . . . 

VI. The Nation of London 
VIL Dublin .... 
VIII. Prejiature Manhood . 

IX. Tub Runaway .... 
X. Thk Prior y .... 

XI. Oxford 

XII. Opium . ... 

XIII. First Plunge into Authordom 

XIV. My Home 



Paqr 
13 

15 

30 

41 

47 

53 

63 

67 

90 

111 

ijO 

131 

142 

144 



DREAMS. 

Introductory Notice 

Levana and our Ladies op Sorrow 

The Daughter op Lebanon 

The Vision of Sudden Death 

Dream Fugue . 



147 
157 

167 
175 
198 



NARRATIVES. 



The Spanish Nun . 
The Easedale Romance 



211 
266 



IV 



Joan of Aeo 
The Palimpsest 
Conversation 



CONTENTS. 
ESSAYS. 



Page 
297 
330 
841 



CRITIQUES AND REMINISCENCES. 



Shakspeare . - . . . 

Milton . . .... 

Wordsworth .... 

Samuel Taylor Coleridqb . 

The Ancient Mariner . . . . 

SOUTHET .... 

Chari-es Lamb . . . . . 

Sir Humphry Davy 

Mrs. Siddons and Mrs. Hannah Morb 

Sir William Hamilton 



357 
359 
362 
871 
374 
876 
879 
887 
389 
892 



DETACHED GEMS 



401 



INTRODUCTORY NOTICE 



OP 



DE QUINCEY'S LIFE AND WRITING S. 



Great men seldom appear in the literary hemisphere isola^ 

ted, 

" Like a star 
When only one is shining in the sky,*' 

but in brilliant clusters, as in the Augustine age, and in the 
reio-n of Elizabeth of Ens-land. Such a constellation loomed 
above the horizon of England near the close of the last century, 
and shed its effulgence over more than half of the present cen- 
tury. 

Scott, Byron, Southey, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Lamb,, Lan- 
dor, Rogers, Macaulay, De Quincey, (and may we not add our 
own Irving?) with others of less magnitude, formed this Orion- 
like constellation, with its attendant Hyades and Pleiads. 

All — all have set, — excepting the octogenarian, Walter 
Savage Landor. 

Thomas de Quincey was one of the last survivors of this 
glorious band. He died at Edinburgh, December 8, 1859.* 

*De Quincey left five children. Two sons; one, a Captain in the 
army, in India; the other, a physician in Brazil. Of his three daugh- 
ters, the eldest, Mrs. Ex)bert Craig, and the youngest, (unmarried), were 
with their father at the time of his decease. The other daughter was 
with her husband, Colonel Baird Smith, in India. 



Vm INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 

His last illness was of short duration. For a long time, how- 
ever, the earthly tenement had seemed too slight to hold the 
restless, powerful mind within its narrow bounds. That mind 
retained its vivid perceptions and its characteristic capaciousness 
and acuteness till his last fatal illness. Strange that a life held 
by so frail a tenure should have been continued beyond the 
threescore and ten years allotted to man ! 

For some years past De Quincey had secluded himself from 
general society, finding solace and occupation among the mute 
companions of his library. Occasionally, he went from Lass- 
wade, his home, to Edinburgh, and there he had remained for 
some months previous to his decease. 

De Quincey was, by temperament, exceedingly susceptible to 
all external impressions ; indued with a delicate sensibility that 
thrilled in sympathy with human joy and human woe, as the 
iEolian harp responds to the lightest breeze, passing over its 
vibratile chords. 

Though saddened by the keen sufferings and sorrows of 
early life, he cast no gloom over the social circle. Even in 
later years, he was the promoter of innocent mirth, and charmed 
with his delightful conversation an admiring circle of friends, 
young and old. 

In his conversation, De Quincey avoided that usurpation 
which he so frequently and so severely denounces. 

" Conversation," says some one, "should be like an Orclies- 
tra, where every player has his own part to perform." The 
conversational " Orchestra" in which De Quincey was a per- 
former must have demanded of him a frequent solo. In addi- 
tion to his remarkable responsiveness, his boundless field of 
illustration, his felicitous language, his exquisite taste, his aerial 
fancy, and his odd humor, gave to his conversation its irresis- 
tible charm. 

His manners were polished and refined ; yet conciliatory and 
cordial. Towards women, especially, he was chivalrous in his 



INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. IX 

politeness — one of tbat class now, unfortunately, in its deca- 
dence, — namely, the " G-entlemen of the old-school." His affec- 
tions were deep, tender, and enduring ; consequently, he had 
troops of friends. 

Thomas De Quincey was, undeniably, one of the greatest 
masters of the English Language, who have committed thought 
to writing. In addition to his happy choice of words, fitting 
the thought to a hair's breadth, there is a striking peculiarity 
in his style, which can be best explained by himself. He says, 

— "A sentence, even when insulated and viewed apart for 
itself, is a subject for complex art : even so far it is capable of 
multiform beauty, and liable to a whole nosology of raalconfor- 
mations. But it is in ihQ relation of sentences, in what 
Horace terms their ''junciuraj" that the true life of composi- 
tion resides. The mode of their nexus, — the way in which 
one sentence is made to arise out of another, and to prepare the 
opening for a third, — this is the great loom in which the textile 
process of the moving intellect reveals itself and prospers. 
Here the separate clauses of a period become architectural parts, 
aiding, relieving, supporting each other. But how can any ap- 
proach to that effect, or any suggestion of it, exist for him who 
hides and bui-ies all openings for parts and graceful correspond- 
ences in one monotonous continuity of period, stretching over 
three octavo pages? Kant was a great man, but he was obtuse 
and deaf as an antediluvian boulder with regard to language 
and its capacities. He has sentences which have been measured 
by a carpenter, and some of them run two feet eight by six 
inches. Now, a sentence with that enormous span is fit only 
for the use of a megatherium or a pre- Adamite. Parts so re- 
mote as the beginning and the end of such a sentence can have 
no sensible relation to each other ; not much as regards their 
logic, but none at all as regards their more sensuous qualities, 

— rhythmus, for instance, or the continuity of metaphor. And 
it is clear that, if the internal relations of a sentence fade under 

1* 



X INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 

the extravagant misproportion of its scale, a fortiori must the 
outer relations. If two figures, or other objects, are meant to 
modify each other visually by means of color, of outline, or of 
expression, they must be brought into juxtaposition, or at least 
into neighborhood. A chasm between them so vast as to pre- 
vent the synthesis of the two objects in one co -existing field of 
vison, interrupts the play of all genial comparison. Periods, 
and clauses of periods, modify each other, and build up a whole 
then, only, when the parts are shown as parts, cohering and con- 
spiring to a common result. But if each pai-t is separately so 
vast as to echpse the disc of the adjacent parts, then substan- 
tially they are separate wholes, and do not coalesce to any joint 
or complex impression. 

It is certain that style, or (to speak by the most general ex- 
pression) the management of language, ranks amongst the fine 
arts, and is able therefore to yield a separate intellectual pleasure 
quite apart from the interest of the subject treated. So far, it 
is already one error to rate the value of style as if it were ne- 
cessarily a dependent or subordinate thing. On the contrary, 
style has an absolute value, like the product of any other ex- 
quisite art, quite distinct from the value of the subject about 
which it is employed, and irrelatively to the subject ; precisely 
as the fine workmanship of Scopas the Greek, or of Cellini the 
Florentine, is equally valued by the connoisseur, whether em- 
bodied in bronze or marble, in an ivory or golden vase. 

Style has two separate functions — first, to brighten the ^n- 
telligiUlity of a subject which is obscure to the understanding ; 
secondly, to regenerate the normal power and impressiveness 
of a subject which has become dormant to the sensibilities. 
Darkness gathers upon many a theme, sometimes from previous 
mistreatment but oftener from original perplexities inverting 
its very nature. Upon the style it is t)iat these perplexities 
greatly depend for their illumination." 

This wonderful ''illumination " is cast by De Quincey's own 



INTKODUCTORY NOTICE. XI 

Style over every topic it touches, like the brilliant illumination 
of a great city, for some national jubilee. And how various 
and how dissimilar were these topics, — War, Religion, History, 
Political Economy, Pbiloeophy, Biography, Romance, Dreams, 
Murders, Opium-eating! Of his Dreams, one of his m.ost 
acute and discriminating critics* says : — " We suppose it will 
be agreed that there is nothing in our language to be compared 
with De Quincey's Dreams ; nay, to speak of comparison is 
inadmissible, for they are absolutely alone. To the ' Dream 
Fugue,' founded on the ^Vision of Sudden Death,' we point 
with calmest assurance, as illustrating our general remark, — 
The wondrous picture has the vividness and truth of reality." 

*' Taken in connection with the incident which was its occa- 
sion ; considered as a poetic idealization of reality, and an 
effort of linguistic power ; tried by the severe rules of Art, 
as demanding the very highest manifestation of order and har- 
mony possible by man, we think we could maintain against all 
comers that this is, for its size, the noblest production in English 
prose." *^ We think it were difficult," says Bayne, " to match 
in our whole late literature, the pathetic effect realized in his 
paper on the Maid of Orleans. And who does not see that, be- 
sides all else of instruction and of consolation which arises from 
the pyres of the martyrs of Christianity, besides the deathless 
lessons of courage, of devotion, of purest holiness which they 
convey, there is also in the legacy of the fathers to the human 
race, that, by sympathizing sorrow over their woes each gene- 
ration is elevated, and humanized and ennobled. This great 
lesson De Quineey has embodied with an almost unexampled 
felicity in his paper on Joan of Arc." 

In every mind where pathos is found, there too will be found 
its antipode, — humor. This was eminently true of De Quineey. 
His quaint and original humor excites a quiet smile in the midst 

* Peter Bayne. 



Xll INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 

of his gravest writings. Even his exquisite taste did not pre- 
vent an occasional ebullition of this humor — manifestly out of 
place. 

With his brilliant imagination, subtile mysticism, extensive 
erudition, it surprises us to find that he possessed the analytic 
faculty, in an eminent degree. " My proper vocation/' he 
says, " as I well knew, was the exercise of the analytic under- 
standing." 

De Quincey has given so much of his outer and his inn«r 
life in his multitudinous pages, that little is left to be added by 
future biographers. He has portrayed himself with candor and 
openness, — without extenuation, and almost without apology. 
We recognize it, if not as a photograph, yet, as a true, unideal- 
ized likeness of Thomas de Quincey. 



DE QUINCEY'S EARLY LIFE : 

GATHERED FEOM HIS VARIOUS WRITINGS. 



I. 

THE DE QUINCEYS. 

This family, which split into three national divisions, 
— English, French, and American, — was originally 
Norwegian ; and in the year of our Christian era One 
Thousand spoke the most undeniable Norse. Through- 
out the eleventh century, the heads of this family held 
themselves in readiness to join any likely leader; 
and did join William the Norman. 

This Norwegian family having assumed a territorial 
denomination from the district or village of Quincey, 
in the province now called Normandy, transplanted 
themselves to England; where, and subsequently by 
marriage in Scotland, they ascended to the highest 
rank in both kingdoms, and held the highest offices 
open to a subject. Early in the seventh century, when 
it seemed likely that the interests of a particular family 
would be entangled with the principles at issue, multi- 
tudes became anxious to evade the strife by retiring to 
the asylum of forests. Amongst these was one branch 
of the De Quinceys. 

Enamored of Democracy, this family, laying aside 
the aristocratic De attached to their name, settled in 
New-England where they subsequently rose, through 
long public services, to the highest moral rank — as 
measured by all possible expressions of public esteem 
that are consistent with the simplicities of the great 

(13) 



14 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

republic. Mr. Josiah Quincy, as head of this distin- 
guished family, is appealed to as one who takes rank by 
age and large political experience, with the founders of 
the American Union. 

Another branch of the same family had, at a much 
earlier period, settled in France. Finally, the squires 
and squireens natually remained in England. The 
last of them who enjoyed any relics, whatever, of that 
ancient territorial domain, was an elder kinsman of my 
father. I never had the honor of seeing him ; in fact, 
it was impossible that I should have such an honor, 
since he died during the American war, which war had 
closed, although it had not paid its bills, some time 
before my birth. He enacted the part of squireen, I 
have been told, creditably enough in a village belong- 
ing either to the county of Leicester, Nottingham, or 
Rutland. With his death, a new era commenced for 
this historical family, which now, (as if expressly to 
irritate its ambition) finds itself distributed amongst 
three mighty nations, — France, America, and England, 
and precisely those three that are usually regarded as 
the leaders of civilization. 



n. 

CHILDHOOD. 

My father was a merchant ; not in the sense of Scot- 
land, where it means a retail dealer, one, for instance, 
who sells groceries in a cellar, but in the English sense, 
a sense rigorously exclusive ; that is, he was a man 
engaged in foreign commerce, and no other ; therefore, 
in wholesale commerce, and no other. He died at an 
early age, leaving to his family, then consisting of a 
wife and six children, an unburdened estate producing 
exactly sixteen hundred pounds a year. Naturally, 
therefore, at the date of my narrative, — whilst he was 
still living, — he had an income very much larger, from 
the addition of current commercial profits. Now, to 
any man who is acquainted with commercial life as it 
exists in England, it will readily occur that in an 
opulent English family of that class — opulent though 
not emphatically rich in a mercantile estimate — the 
domestic economy is pretty sure to move upon a scale 
of liberality altogether unknown amongst the corre- 
sponding orders in foreign nations. 

We, the children of the house, stood, in fact, upon 
the very happiest tier in the social scaffolding for all 
good influences. The prayer of Agur — "Give me 
neither poverty nor riches" — was realized for us. 
That blessing we had, being neither too high nor too 
low. High enough we were to see models of good 

(15) 



16 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

manners, of self-respect, and of simple dignity ; obscure 
enough to be left in the sweetest of solitudes. Grateful 
also to this hour I am, that, amidst luxuries in all things 
else, we were trained to a Spartan simplicity of diet — 
that we fared, in fact, very much less sumptuously than 
the servants. And if (after the model of the Emperor 
Marcus Aurelius) I should return thanks to Providence 
for all the separate blessings of my early situation, 
these four I would single out as worthy of special com- 
memoration — that I lived in a rustic solitude ; that this 
solitude was in England ; that my infant feelings were 
moulded by the gentlest of sisters, and not by horrid, 
pugilistic brothers ; finally, that I and they were dutiful 
and loving members of a pure, holy, and magnificent 
church. 

The earliest incidents in my life, which left stings in 
my memory so as to be remembered at this day, were 
two, and both before I could have completed my second 
year; namely, first, a remarkable dream of terrific 
grandeur about a favorite nurse, which is interesting to 
myself for this reason — that it demonstrates my dream- 
ing tendencies to have been constitutional, and not 
dependent upon laudanum ; and, secondly, the fact of 
having connected a profound sense of pathos with the 
reappearance, very early in the spring, of some cro- 
cuses. This I mention as inexplicable : for such annual 
resurrections of plants and flowers affect us only as 
memorials, or suggestions of some higher change, and 
therefore in connection with the idea of death ; yet of 
death I could, at that time, have had no experience 
whatever. 



CHILDHOOD. 17 

This, however, I was speedily to acquire. My two 
eldest sisters — eldest of three then living, and also 
elder "than myself — were summoned to an early death. 
The first who died was Jane, about two years older 
than myself. She was three and a half, I one and a 
half, more or less, by some trifle that I do not recollect. 
But death was then scarcely intelligible to me, and I 
could not so properly be said to suffer sorrow as a sad 
perplexity. 

So passed away from earth one of those three sisters 
that made up my nursery playmates ; and so did my 
acquaintance (if such it could be called) commence 
with mortality. Yet, in fact I knew little more of 
mortality than that Jane had disappeared. She had 
gone away ; but perhaps she would come back. Happy 
interval of heaven-born ignorance ! Gracious immu- 
nity of infancy from sorrow disproportioned to its 
strength ! I was sad for Jane's absence. But still ia 
my heart I trusted that she would come again. Summer 
and winter came again — crocuses and roses ; why not 
little Jane ? 

Thus easily was healed, then, the first wound in my 
infant heart. Not so the second. For thou, dear, 
noble Elizabeth, around whose ample brow, as often as 
thy sweet countenance rises upon the darkness, I fancy 
a tiara of light or a gleaming aureola in token of thy 
premature intellectual grandeur, — thou whose head, 
for its superb developments, was the astonishment of 
science, — thou next, but after an interval of happy 
years, thou also wert summoned away from our nursery ; 
and the night, which for me gathered upon that event, 
ran after my steps far into life ; and perhaps at this 



18 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

day I resemble little for good or for ill that which else 
I should have been. Pillar of fire that didst go before 
me to guide and to quicken, — pillar of darkness, when 
thy countenance was turned away to God, that didst 
too truly reveal to my dawning fears the secret shadow 
of death, — by what mysterious gravitation was it that 
iny heart had been drawn to thine ? 

" Love, the holy sense. 
Best gift of God, in thee was most intense.'* 

It is needless to pursue, circumstantially, the course 
of that sickness which carried off my leader and com- 
panion. She (according to my recollection at this 
moment,) was just as near to nine as I to six. And per- 
haps this natural precedency in authority of years and 
judgment, united to the tender humility with which 
she declined to assert it, had been amongst the fascina- 
tions of her presence. I grieved that my sister should 
lie in bed ; I grieved still more to hear her moan. But 
all this appeared to me no more than as a night of 
trouble, on which the dawn would soon arise. mo- 
ment of darkness and delirium, when the elder nurse 
awakened me from that delusion, and launched God's 
thunderbolt at my heart in the assurance that my sister 
MUST die ! Rightly it is said of utter, utter misery, 
that it " can not be remembered.'''^ Itself, as a remem- 
berable thing, is swallowed up in its own chaos. Blank 
anarchy and confusion of mind fell upon me. Deal 
and blind I was as I reeled under the revelation. I 

* " I stood in unimaginable trance 

And agony which can not be remembered." 

—Speech of Alhadra, in Coleridge'' s Remorse. 



CHILDHOOD. 19 

wish not to recall the circumstances of that time, when 
my agony was at its height, and hers, in another sense, 
was approaching. Enough it is to say that all was soon 
over ; and the morning of that day had at last arrived 
which looked down upon her innocent face, sleeping the 
sleep from which there is no awaking, and upon me sor- 
rowing the sorrow for which there is no consolation. 

On the day after my sister's death, whilst the sweet 
temple of her brain was yet unviolated by human scru- 
tiny, I formed my own scheme for seeing her once 
more. Not for the world would I have made this 
known, nor have suffered a witness to accompany me 
I had never heard of feelings that take the name of 
" sentimental," nor dreamed of such a possibility. 
But grief, even in a child, hates the light, and shrinks 
from human eyes. The house was large enough to 
have two staircases ; and by one of these I knew that 
about midday, when all would be quiet, (for the ser- 
vants dined at one o'clock), I could steal up into her 
chamber. I imagine that it was about an hour after 
high noon when I reached the chamber door ; it was 
locked, but the key was not taken away. Entering, I 
closed the door so softly, that, although it opened upon 
a hall which ascended through all the stories, no echo 
ran along the silent walls. Then, turning round, I 
sought my sister's face. But the bed had been moved, 
and the back was now turned towards myself. Nothing 
met my eyes but one large window, wide open, through 
which the sun of midsummer, at midday, was showering 
down torrents of splendor. The weather was dry, the 
sky was cloudless, the blue depths seemed the express 
types of infinity ; and it was not possible for eye to be- 



20 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

hold, or for heart to conceive, any symbols more pa- 
thetic of life and the glory of life. 

From the gorgeous sunlight I turned around to the 
corpse. There lay the sweet childish figure ; there the 
angel face ; and, as people usually fancy, it was said in 
the house that no features had suffered any change. 
Had they not? The forehead, indeed, — the serene 
and noble forehead, — that might be the same ; but the 
frozen eyelids, the darkness that seemed to steal from 
beneath them, the marble lips, the stiffening hands, laid 
palm to palm, as if repeating the supplications of 
closing anguish, — could these be mistaken for life ? 
Had it been so, wherefore did I not spring to those 
heavenly lips with tears and never ending kisses ? But 
so it was not. I stood checked for a moment ; awe, 
not fear, fell upon me ; and, whilst I stood, a solemn 
wind began to blow — the saddest that ear ever heard. 
It was a wind that might have swept the fields of mor- 
tality for a thousand centuries. Many times since, 
upon summer days, when the sun is about the hottest, 
I have remarked the same wind arising and uttering 
the same hollow, solemn, Memnonian, but saintly swell : 
it is in this world the one great audible symbol of 
eternity. And three times in my life have I happened 
to hear the same sound in the same circumstances — 
namely, when standing between an open window and a 
dead body on a summer day. 

Instantly, when my ear caught this vast ^olian into- 
nation, when my eye filled with the golden fulness of 
life, the pomps of the heavens above, or the glory of 
the flowers below, and turning when it settled upon the 
frost which overspread my sister's face, instantly a 



CHILDHOOD. 21 

trance fell upon rao. A vault seemed to open in the 
zenith of the far blue sky, a shaft which ran up forever. 
I, in spirit, rose as if on billows that also ran up the 
shaft forever ; and the billows seemed to pursue the 
throne of God ; but that also ran before us and fled 
away continually. The flight and the pursuit seemed 
to go on for ever and ever. Frost gathering frost, 
some Sarsar wind of death, seemed to repel mo ; some 
mighty relation between God and death dimly struggled 
to evolve itself from the dreadful antagonism bet'^veen 
them ; shadowy meanings even yet continued to exer- 
cise and torment, in dreams, the deciphering oracle 
within me. I slept — for how long I cannot sav: 
slowly I recovered my self-possession ; and when" I 
woke, found myself standing, as before, close to my 
sister's bed. 

1 have reason to believe that a very long interval had 
elapsed during this wandering or suspension of my 
perfect mind. When I returned to myself, there was 
a foot (or I fancied so) on the stairs. I was alarmed ; 
for, if any body had detected me, means would have 
been taken to prevent my coming again. Hastily, 
therefore, I kissed the lips that I should kiss no more, 
and slunk, like a guilty thing, with stealthy steps from 
the room. Thus perished the vision, loveliest amongst 
all the shows which earth has revealed to me ; thus 
mutilated was the parting which should have lasted for 
ever ; tainted thus with fear was that farewell sacred 
to love and grief, to perfect love and to grief that could 
not be healed. 

At this time, and under this impulse of rapacious 
grief, that grasped at what it could not obtain, the 



22 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

faculty of shaping images in the distance out of slight 
elements, and grouping them after the yearnings of 
the heart, grew upon me in morbid excess. And I 
recall at the present moment one instance of that sort 
which may show how merely shadows, or a gleam of 
brightness, or nothing at all, could furnish a sufficient 
basis for this creative faculty. 

On Sunday mornings I went with the rest of my 
family to church : it was a church on the ancient model 
of England, having aisles, galleries,* organ, all things 
ancient and venerable, and the proportions majestic. 
Here, whilst the congregation knelt through the long 
litany, as often as we came to that passage, so beautiful 
amongst many that are so, where God is supplicated on 
behalf of " all sick persons and young children," and 
that he would " show his pity upon all prisoners and 
captives," I wept in secret ; and raising my streaming 
eyes to the upper windows of the galleries, saw, on 
days when the sun was shining, a spectacle as affecting 
as ever prophet can have beheld. The sides of the 
windows were rich with storied glass ; through the 
deep purples and crimsons streamed the golden light ; 
emblazonries of heavenly illumination (from the sun) 
mingling with the earthly emblazonries (from art and 
its gorgeous coloring) of what is grandest in man. 
There were the apostles that had trampled upon earth, 
and the glories of earth, out of celestial love to man. 

* " Galleries.'' — These, though condemned on some grounds by tho 
restorers of authentic church architecture, have, nevertheless, this one 
advantage — that, when the heiffht of a church is that dimension which 
most of all expresses its sacred character, galleries expound and inter- 
pret that height. 



CHILDHOOD. 23 

Tliere were the martyrs that had borne witness to the 
truth through flames, through torments, and through 
armies of fierce, insulting faces. There were the saints 
who, under intolerable pangs, had glorified God by 
meek submission to his will. And all the time, whilst 
tliis tumult of sublime memorials held on as the deep 
chords from some accompaniment in the bass, I saw 
through the wide central field of the window, where 
the glass was w^colored, white, fleecy clouds sailing 
over the azure depths of the sky : were it but a frag- 
ment or a hint of such a cloud, immediately under the 
flash of my sorrow-haunted eye, it grew and shaped 
itself into visions of beds with white lawny curtains ; 
and in the beds lay sick children, dying children, that 
were tossing in anguish, and weeping clamorously for 
death. God, for some mysterious reason, could not 
suddenly release them from their pain ; but he sufi'ered 
the beds, as it seemed, to rise slowly through the 
clouds ; slowly the beds ascended into the chambers of 
the air ; slowly, also, his arms descended from the 
heavens, that he and his young children, whom in Pal- 
estine, once and for ever, he had blessed, though they 
must pass slowly through the dreadful chasm of sepa- 
ration, might yet meet the sooner. 

These visions were self-sustained. These visions 
needed not that any sound should speak to me, or 
music mould my feelings. The hint from the litany, 
the fragment from the clouds, — those and the storied 
windows were sufficient. But not the less the blare of 
the tumultuous organ wrought its own separate creations. 
And oftentimes in anthems, when the mighty instru- 
ment threw its vast colunms of sound, fierce yet melo- 



24 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

dious, over the voices of the choir, — high in arches, 
when it seemed to rise, surmounting and overriding the 
strife of the vocal parts, and gathering by strong coer- 
cion the total storm into unity, — sometimes I seemed 
to rise and walk triumphantly upon those cloud^ which, 
but a moment before, I had looked up to as mementoes 
of prostate sorrow ; yes, sometimes under the transfigur- 
ations of music, felt of grief itself as of a fiery chariot 
for mounting victoriously above the causes of grief. 

God speaks to children, also, in dreams, and by the 
oracles that lurk in darkness. But in solitude, above 
all things, when made vocal to the meditative heart by 
the truths and services of a national church, God holds 
with children " communion undisturbed." Solitude, 
though it may be silent as light, is, like light, the 
mightiest of agencies; for solitude is essential to man. 
All men come into this world alone ; all leave it alone. 
Even a little child has a dread, whispering conscious- 
ness, that, if he should be summoned to travel into 
God's presence, no gentle nurse will be allowed to lead 
him by the hand, nor mother to carry him in her arms, 
nor little sister to share his trepidations. King and 
priest, warrior and maiden, philosopher and child, all 
must walk those mighty galleries alone. The solitude, 
therefore, which in this world appalls or fascinates a 
child's heart, is but the echo of a far deeper solitude, 
through which already he has passed, and of another 
solitude deeper still, through which he has to pass : 
reflex of one solitude — prefiguration of another. 

burden of solitude, that cleavest to man through 
every stage of his being ! in his birth, which has been — > 
in his life, which is — in his death, which shall be — « 



CHILDHOOD. 25 

mighty and essential solitude ! that wast, and art, 
and art to be ; thou broodest, like the Spirit of God 
moving upon the surface of the deeps, over every heart 
that sleeps in the nurseries of Christendom. Like the 
vast laboratory of the air, which, seeming to be nothing, 
or less than the shadow of a shade, hides within itself 
the principles of all things, solitude for the meditating 
child is the Agrippa's mirror of the unseen universe. 
Deep is the solitude of millions who, with hearts 
welling forth love, have none to love them. Deep is 
the solitude of those who, under secret griefs, have 
none to pity them. Deep is the solitude of those who, 
fighting with doubts or darkness, have none to counsel 
them. But deeper than the deepest of these solitudes 
is that which broods over childhood under the passion 
of sorrow — bringing before it, at intervals, the final 
solitude which watches for it, and is waiting for it 
within the gates of death. mighty and essential 
solitude, that wast, and art, and art to be, thy kingdom 
is made perfect in the grave ; but even over those that 
keep watch outside the grave, like myself, an infant of 
six years old, thou stretchest out a sceptre of fascina- 
tion. 

Well it was for me that, at this crisis, I was sum- 
moned to put on the harness of life by commencing my 
classical studies under one of my guardians, a clergy- 
man of the English Church, and (so far as regarded 
Ijatin) a most accomplished scholar. 

At the very commencement of my new studies there 

happened an incident which afflicted me much for a 

short time, and left behind a gloomy impression, that 

suffering and wretchedness were diffused amongst all 

2 



26 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

creatures tliat breathe. A person had given me a kit- 
ten. There are three animals which seem, beyond all 
others, to reflect the beauty of human infancy in two of 
its elements — namely, joy and guileless innocence, 
though less in its third element of simplicity, because 
that requires language for its full expression : these 
three animals are the kitten, the lamb, and the fawn. 
Other creatures may be as happy, but they do not show 
it so much. Great was the love which poor silly I had 
for this little kitten ; but, as I left home at ten in the 
morning, and did not return till near five in the after- 
noon, I was obliged, with some anxiety, to throw it for 
those seven hours upon its own discretion, as infirm a 
basis for reasonable hope as could be imagined. I did 
not wish the kitten, indeed, at all less foolish than it 
was, except just when I was leaving home, and then its 
exceeding folly gave me a pang. Just about that time, 
it happened that we had received, as a present from 
Leicestershire, a fine young Newfoundland dog, who 
was under a cloud of disgrace for crimes of his youth- 
ful blood committed in that county. My poor kitten, 
it was supposed, had been engaged in some playful 
trespass upon Turk's property, and Turk laid her dead 
on the spot. It is impossible to describe my grief when 
the case was made known to me at five o'clock in the 
evening, by a man's holding out the little creature 
dead : she that I had left so full of glorious life — life 
which even in a kitten is infinite, — was now stretched 
in motionless repose. I remember that there was a 
large coal-stack in the yard. I dropped my Latin 
books, sat down upon a huge block of coal, and burst 
into a passion of tears. 



CHILDHOOD. 27 

The new intercourse with my guardian, and the 
changes of scene which naturally it led to, were of use 
in weaning my mind from the mere disease which 
threatened it in case I had been left any longer to my 
total solitude. But out of these changes grew an in- 
cident which restored my grief, though in a more 
troubled shape, and now for the first time associated 
with something like remorse and deadly anxiety. I 
can safely say that this was my earliest trespass, and 
perhaps a venial one, all things considered. Nobody 
ever discovered it ; and but for my own frankness it 
would not be known to this day. But that I could not 
know ; and for years, — that is, from seven or earlier 
up to ten, — such was my simplicity, that I lived in 
constant terror. This, though it revived my grief, did 
me probably great service ; because it was no longer a 
state of languishhig desire tending to torpor, but of 
feverish irritation and gnawing care, that kept alive 
the activity of my understanding. 

The case was this : — It happened that I had now, 
and commencing with my first introduction to Latin 
studies, a large weekly allowance of pocket-money, — 
too large for my age, but safely intrusted to myself, 
who never spent or desired to spend one fraction of it 
upon anything but books. But all proved too little for 
my colossal schemes. Had the Vatican, the Bodleian, 
and the Bibliotheque du Roi, been all emptied into one 
collection for my private gratification, little progress 
would have been made towards content in this particu 
lar craving. Very soon I had run ahead of my allow- 
ance, and was about three guineas deep in debt. There 
I paused ; for deep anxiety* now began to oppress me 



2S BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

as to the course in which this mysterious (and indeed 
guilty) current of debt would finally flow. For the 
present it was frozen up ; but I had some reason for 
thinking that Christmas thawed all debts whatsoever, 
and set them in motion towards innumerable pockets. 
Now m?/ debt would be thawed with all the rest ; and 
in what direction would it flow ? There was no river 
that would carry it off to sea; to somebody's pocket it 
would beyond a doubt make its way ; and who was 
that somebody ? This question haunted me forever. 
Christmas had come, Christmas had gone, and I heard 
nothing of the three guineas. My private " little ac- 
count" had in fact flowed homewards at Christmas, not 
(as I anticipated) in the shape of an independent cur- 
rent, but as a little tributary rill, that was lost in the 
waters of some more important river. This I now 
know, but could not then have known with any cer- 
tainty. Had I been less ignorant, I should have pro- 
posed to mortgage my weekly allowance for the debt, 
or to form a sinking fund for redeeming it; for the 
loeekly sum was nearly five per cent, on tlie entire debt.. 
But I had a mysterious awe of ever alluding to it. This 
arose from my want of some confidential friend ; whilst 
my grief pointed continually to the remembrance, that 
so it had not always been. I durst ask no counsel ; 
there was no one to ask. Possibly my sister could have 
given me none in a case which neither of us should 
have understood, and where to seek for information 
from others would have been at once to betray the 
whole reason for seeking it. But, if no advice, she 
would have given me her pity, and the expression of 
her endless love ; and, with the relief of sympathy. 



CHILDHOOD. 29 

that heals for a season all distresses, she would have 
given me that exquisite luxury — the knowledge that, 
having parted with my secret, yet also I had not parted 
with it, since it was in the |Aj^er only of one that could 
much less betray me than I could betray myself. At 
this time, — that is, about the year when I ^suffered 
most, — I was reading Cassar. 0, laurelled scholar, 
sunbright intellect, " foremost man of all this world," 
how often did I make out of thy immortal volume a 
pillow to support my wearied brow, as at evening, on 
my homeward road, I used to turn into some silent 
field, where I might give way unobserved to the reve- 
ries which besieged me ! I wondered, and found no 
end of wondering, at the revolution that one short year 
had made in my happiness. I wondered that such bil- 
lows could overtake me. At the beginning of that 
year, how radiantly happy ! At the end, how insup- 
portably alone ! 

** Into wliat depth thou seest, 
From what height fallen." 

Forever I searched the abysses with some wander- 
ing thoughts unintelligible to myself. Forever I dal- 
lied with some obscure notion, how my sister's love 
might be made in some dim way available for deliver- 
ing me from misery ; or else how the misery I had suf- 
fered and was sufi'ering might be made, in some way 
equally dim, the ransom for winning back her love. 



III. 

INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OP STRIFE. 

So, then, one chapter in my life had finished. — 
Already, before the conclusion of my sixth year, this 
first chapter had rmi its circle, had rendered up its 
music to the final chord — might seem even, like ripe 
fruit from a tree, to have detached itself for ever from 
all the rest of the arras that was shaping itself within 
my loom of life. 

Well it was for me at this period, if well it were for 
me to live at all, that from any continued contemplation 
of my misery I was forced to wean myself, and sud- 
denly to assume the harness of life. Else under the 
morbid languishing of grief, and of what the Romans 
called desiderium, (the yearning too obstinate after one 
irrecoverable face), too probably I should have pined 
away into an early grave. Harsh was my awaking ; 
but the rough febrifuge which this awaking adminis- 
tered broke the strength of my sickly reveries through 
a period of more than two years ; by which time, under 
the natural expansion of my bodily strength, the 
danger had passed over. 

I have rendered solemn thanks for having been 
trained amongst the gentlest of sisters, and not under 
" horrid pugilistic brothers." Meantime, one such 
brother I had, senior by much to myself, and the storm- 
iest of his class : him I will immediately present to the 
(30) 



INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE. 31 

reader ; for up to this point of my narrative lie may 
be described as a stranger even to myself. Odd as it 
sounds, I had at this time both a brother and a father, 
neither of whom would have been able to challenge me 
as a relative, nor I /u'm, had we happened to meet on 
the public roads. 

In my father's case, this arose from the accident of his 
having lived abroad for a space that, measured against 
my life, was a very long one. First, he lived for 
months in Portugal, at Lisbon, and at Cintra ; next in 
Madeira ; then in the West-Indies ; sometimes in 
Jamacia, sometimes in St. Kitt's ; courting the sup- 
posed benefit of hot climates in his complaint of pul- 
monary consumption. He had, indeed, repeatedly 
returned to England, and met my mother at watering 
places on the south coast of Devonshire, &c. But I, 
as a younger child, had not been one of the party 
selected for such excursions from home. And now, at 
last, when all had proved unavailing, he was coming 
home to die amongst his family, in his thirty-ninth year. 
My mother had gone to await his arrival at the port 
(whatever port) to which the West-India packet should 
bring him ; and amongst the deepest recollections which 
I connect with that period, is one derived from the 
night of his arrival at Greenhay. 

It was a summer evening of unusual solemnity. The 
servants and four of us children, were gathered for 
hours on the lawn before the house, listening for the 
sound of wheels. Sunset came — nine, ten, eleven 
o'clock, and nearly another hour had passed — without 
a warning sound ; for Greenhay, being so solitary a 
house, formed a terminus ad quern, beyond which was 



32 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

nothing but a cluster of cottages, composing the little 
hamlet of Greenhill ; so that any sound of wheels 
coming from the winding lane which then connected us 
with the Rusholme Road, carried with it, of necessity, 
a warning summons to prepare for visitors at Greenhay. 
No such summons had yet reached us ; it was nearly 
midnight ; and for the last time, it was determined that 
we should move in a body out of the grounds, on the 
chance of meeting the travelling party, if, at so late an 
hour, it could yet be expected to arrive. In fact, to 
our general surprise, we met it almost immediately, but 
coming at so slow a pace, that the fall of the horses' 
feet was not audible until we were close upon them. I 
mention the case for the sake of the undying impres- 
sions which connected themselves with the circum- 
stances. The first notice of the approach was the 
gudden emerging of horses' heads from the deep gloom 
of the shady lane ; the next was the mass of white 
pillows against which the dying patient was reclining. 
The hearse-like pace at which the carriage moved, 
recalled the overwhelming spectacle of that funeral 
which had so lately formed a part in the most memor- 
able event of my life. But these elements of awe, that 
might at any rate have struck forcibly upon the mind 
of a child, were for me, in my condition of morbid ner- 
vousness, raised into abiding grandeur by the antece- 
dent experiences of that particular summer night. The 
listening for hours to the sounds from horses' hoofs 
upon distant roads, rising and falling, caught and lost, 
upon the gentle undulation of such fitful airs as might 
be stirring — the peculiar solemnity of the hours suc- 
ceeding to sunset — the glory of the dying day — the 



INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE. 33 

gorgeousness which, by description, so well I knew of 
sunset in those West-Indian islands from which my 
father was returning — the knowledge that he returned 
only to die — the almighty pomp in which this great 
idea of Death apparelled itself to ray young sorrowing 
heart — the corresponding pomp in which the antago- 
nistic idea, not less mysterious, of life, rose, as if on 
wings, amidst tropic glories and floral pageantries that 
seemed even more solemn and pathetic than the vapory 
plumes and trophies of mortality, — all this chorus of 
restless images, or of suggestive thoughts, gave to my 
father's return, which else had been fitted only to inter- 
pose one transitory red-letter day in the calendar of a 
child, the shadowy power of an ineffaceable agency 
among my dreams. This, indeed, was the one sole 
memorial which restores my father's image to me as a 
personal reality ; otherwise he would have been for me 
a bare nominis umbra. He languished, indeed, for 
weeks upon a sofa ; and, during that interval, it hap- 
pened naturally, from my repose of manners, that I was 
a privileged visitor to him throughout his waking hours. 
I was also present at his bedside in the closing hour of 
his life, which exhaled quietly, amidst snatches of 
delirious conversation with some imaginary visitors. 

My brother was a stranger from causes quite as little 
to be foreseen, but seeming quite as natural after they 
had really occurred. In an early stage of his career, 
he had been found wholly unmangeable. His genius 
for mischief amounted to inspiration ; it was a divine 
afflatus which drove him in that direction ; and such 
was his capacity for riding in whirlwinds and directing 
storms, that he made it his trade to create them, as a 
2* 



34 BEAUTIES OF BE QUINCEY. 

vsqtslrjypqsia Zevg, a cloud-coQipelling Jove, in Order that 
he might direct them. For this, and other reasons, he 
had been sent to the Grammar School of Louth, in 
Lincolnsliire — one of those many old classic institu- 
tions which form the peculiar^ glory of England. 

Fresh from such a training as this, and at a time when 
his additional five or six years availed merely to make 
his age the double of mine, my brother very naturally 
despised me ; and, from his exceeding frankness, he 
took no pains to conceal that he did. Why should he ? 
Who was it that could have a right to feel aggrieved 
by his contempt? Who, if not myself? But it hap- 
pened, on the contrary, that I had a perfect craze for 
being despised. I doted on it, and considered contempt 
a sort of luxury that I was in continual fear of losing. 
Why not? Wherefore should any rational person 
shrink from contempt, if it happen to form the tenure 
by which he holds his repose in life ? The cases which 
are cited from comedy of such a yearning after con- 
tempt, stand upon a footing altogether different : there 
the contempt is wooed as a serviceable ally and tool of 
religious hypocrisy. But to me, at that era of life, it 
formed the main guaranty of an unmolested repose ; 
and security there was not, on any lower terms, for the 
Mentis semita vitce. The slightest approach to any 

*-^^ Peculiar.'" — Viz., as endowed foundations to which those resort 
who are rich and pay, and those also who, being poor, cannot pay, or 
cannot pay so much. This most honorable distinction amongst the 
services of England from ancient times to the interests of education — 
a service absolutely unapproached by any one nation of Christendom — 
is amongst the foremost cases of that remarkable class which make 
England, whilst often the most aristocratic, yet also, for many noble 
purposes, the most democratic of lands. 



INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE. 35 

favorable construction of my intellectual pretensions 
alarmed me beyond measure ; because it pledged me in 
a manner with the hearer to support this first attempt 
by a second, by a third, by a fourth. 

Still, with all this passion for being despised, which 
was so essential to my peace of mind, I found at times 
an altitude — a starry altitude — in the station of con- 
tempt for me assumed by my brother, that nettled me. 
Sometimes, indeed, the mere necessities of dispute 
carried me, before I was aware of my own imprudence, 
so far up the staircase of Babel, that my brother was 
shaken for a moment in the infinity of his contempt; 
and before long, when my superiority in some bookish 
accomplishments displayed itself, by results that could 
not be entirely dissembled, mere foolish human nature 
forced me into some trifle of exultation at these retrib- 
utory triumphs. But more often I was disposed to grieve 
over them. They tended to shake that solid foundation 
of utter despicableness upon which I relied so much for 
my freedom from anxiety ; and therefore, upon the 
whole, it was satisfactory to my mind that my brother's 
opinion of me, after any little transient oscillation, 
gravitated determinately back towards that settled con- 
tempt which had been the result of his original inquest. 
The pillar of Hercules, upon which rested the vast 
edifice of his scorn, were these two — 1st, my physics ; 
he denounced me for effeminacy : 2d, he assumed, and 
even postulated as a datwn, which I myself could never 
have the face to refuse, my general idiocy. Physically, 
therefore, and intellectually, he looked upon me as 
below notice; but, morally^ he assured me that he 
would give me a written character of the very best 



36 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

description, whenever I chose to apply for it. " You're 
honest," he said ; " you're willing, though lazy ; you 
would pull, if you had the strength of a flea ; and, 
though a monstrous coward, you don't run away." My 
own demurs to these harsh judgments were not so many 
as they might have been. The idiocy I confessed ; 
because, though positive that I was not uniformly au 
idiot, I felt inclined to think that, in a majority of 
cases, I really was ; and there were more reasons for 
thinking so than the reader is yet aware of. But, as 
to the effeminacy, I denied it in toto ; and with good 
reason, as will be seen. Neither did my brother pre- 
tend to have any experimental proofs of it. The 
ground he went upon was a mere a priori one, viz., 
that I had always been tied to the apron-string of 
women or girls ; which amounted at most to this — 
that, by training and the natural tendency of circum- 
stances, I ought to be effeminate ; that is, there was 
reason to expect before hand that I should be so ; but, 
then, the more merit in me, if, in spite of such reason- 
able presumptions, I really were not. In fact, my 
brother soon learned, by a daily experience, how en- 
tirely he might depend upon me for carrying out the 
most audacious of his own warlike plans --such plans, 
it is true, that I abominated ; but that made no differ- 
ence in the fidelity with which I tried to fulfil them. 

This eldest brother of mine was in all respects a 
remarkable boy. Haughty he was, aspiring, immeasur- 
ably active ; fertile in resources as Robinson Crusoe ; 
but also full of quarrel as it is possible to imagine ; 
and, in default of any other opponent, lie would have 
fastened a quarrel upon his shadow for presuming to 



INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE. 37 

run before liim when going westwards in the morning, 
whereas, in all reason, a shadow, like a dutiful child, 
ought to keep deferentially in the rear of that majestic 
substance which is the author of its existence. Books 
he detested, one and all, excepting only such as he 
happened to write himself. And these were not a few. 
On all subjects known to man, from the Thirty-nine 
Articles of our English church down to pyrotechnics, 
legerdemain, magic, both black and white, thauma- 
turgy, and necromancy, he favored the world (which 
world was the nursery where I lived amongst my 
sisters) with his select opinions. 

I have mentioned already that we had four male 
guardians, (a fifth being my mother.) These four were 
B., E., G., and H. The two consonants, B. and G-., 
gave us little trouble. G., the wisest of the whole 
band, lived at a distance of more than one hundred 
miles : him, therefore, we rarely saw ; but B., living 
within four miles of Greenhay, washed his hands of us 
by inviting us, every now and then, to spend a few 
days at his house. 

At this house, which stood in the country, there was 
a family of amiable children, who were more skilfully 
trained in their musical studies than at that day was 
usual. They sang the old English glees and madri- 
gals, and correctly enough for me, who, having, even 
at that childish age, a preternatural sensibility to mu- 
sic, had also, as may be supposed, the most entire want 
of musical knowledge. No blunders could do much to 
mar my pleasure. There first I heard the concertos of 
Corclli ; but also, which far more profoundly affected 
me, a few selections from Jomelli and Cimarosa. With 



38 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

Handol 1 had long been familiar, for the famous chorus 
singers of Lancashire sang continually at churches the 
most effective parts from his chief oratorios. Mozart 
was yet to come ; for, except perhaps at the opera in 
London, even at this time, his music was most imper- 
fectly diffused through England. But, above all, a 
thing which to my dying day I could never forget, at 
the house of this guardian T heard sung a long canon 
of Cherubini's. Forty years later I heard it again, 
and better sung ; but at that time I needed nothing 
better. It was sung by four male voices, and rose into 
a region of thrilling passion, such as my heart had al- 
ways dimly craved and hungered after, but which now 
first interpreted itself, as a physical possibility, to my 
ear. 

My brother did not share my inexpressible delight ; 
his taste ran in a different channel ; and the arrange- 
ments of the house did not meet his approbation ; par- 
ticularly this, that either Mrs. B. herself, or else the 
governess, was always present when the young ladies 
joined our society, which my brother considered par- 
ticularly vulgar, since natural propriety and decorum 
should have whispered to an old lady that a young gen- 
tleman might have " things" to say to her daughters 
which he could not possibly intend for the general ear 
of eavesdroppers — things tending to the confidential 
or the sentimental, which none but a shameless old 
lady would seek to participate ; by that means com- 
pelling a young man to talk as loud as if he were ad- 
dressing a mob at Charing Cross, or reading the Riot 
Act. There were other out-of-door amusements, amongst 
which a swing — which I mention for the sake of illus- 



INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD OF STRIFE. 39 

trating the passive obedience which my brother levied 
upon me, either through my conscience, as mastered by 
his doctrine of primogeniture, or, as in this case, through 
my sensibility to shame under his taunts of cowardice. 
It was a most ambitious swing, ascending to a height 
beyond any that I have since seen in fairs or public 
gardens. Horror was at my heart regularly as the 
swing reached its most aerial altitude ; for the oily, 
swallow-like fluency of the swoop downwards threat- 
ened always to make me sick, in which it is probable 
that I must have relaxed my hold of the ropes, and 
have been projected, with fatal violence, to the ground. 
But, in defiance of all this miserable panic, I continued 
to swing whenever he tauntingly invited me. It was 
well that my brother's path in life soon ceased to coin- 
cide with my own, else I should infallibly have broken 
my neck in confronting perils which brought me neither 
honor nor profit, and in accepting defiances which, is- 
sue how they might, won self-reproach from myself, and 
sometimes a gayety of derision from him. 

My brother, amongst his many accomplishments, was 
distinguished for his skill in drawing. Some of his 
sketches had been shown to Mr. De Loutherbourg, an 
academician well known in those days, esteemed even 
in these days, after he has been dead for forty or fifty 
years, and personally a distinguished favorite with tho 
king, (George III.) He pronounced a very flattering 
opinion upon my brother's promise of excellence. This 
being known, a fee of a thousand guineas was offered 
to Mr. L. by the guardians ; and finally that gentle- 
man took charge of my brother as a pupil. Now, 
therefore, my brother separated from me ; and, as it 



40 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

turned out, forever. I never saw liim again ; and, at 
Mr. De L's house in Hammersmith, before he had com- 
pleted his sixteenth year, he died of typhus fever. 

******* * 

Here I had terminated this chapter, as at a natural 
pause, which, whilst shutting out forever my eldest 
brother from the reader's sight and from my own, ne- 
cessarily at the same moment worked a permanent rev- 
olution in the character of my daily life. Two such 
changes, and both so abrupt, indicated imperiously the 
close of one era and the opening of another. The ad- 
vantages, indeed, which my brother had over me in 
years, in physical activities of every kind, in decision 
of purpose, and in energy of will, — all which advan- 
tages, besides, borrowed a ratification from an obscure 
sense, on my part, of duty as incident to what seemed 
an appointment of Providence, — inevitably /m^? con- 
trolled, and for years to come ivould have controlled, 
the free spontaneous movements of a contemplative 
dreamer like myself. Consequently, this separation, 
which proved an eternal one, and contributed to deepen 
my constitutional propensity to gloomy meditation, had 
for me (partly on that account, but much more through 
the sudden birth of perfect independence which so un- 
expectedly it opened) the value of a revolutionary ex- 
perience. 



lY. 

I AM INTRODUCED TO THE WARFARE OP A PUBLIC SCHOOL. 

Four years after my father's death, it began to be 
perceived that there was no purpose to be answered in 
any longer keeping up the costly establishment of 
Grreenhay. A head gardener, besides laborers equal 
to at least two more, were required for the grounds and 
gardens. And no motive existed any longer for being 
near to a great trading town, so long after the com- 
mercial connection with it had ceased. Bath seemed, 
on all accounts, the natural station for a person in my 
mother's situation ; and thither, accordingly, she went. 
I, who had been placed under the tuition of one of my 
guardians, remained some time longer under his care. 
I was then transferred to Bath. During this interval 
the sale of the house and grounds took place. 

In my twelfth year it was that first of all I entered 
upon the arena of a great public school, viz., the Gram- 
mar School of Bath, over which at that time presided 
a most accomplished Etonian — Mr. (or was he as yet 
Doctor ?) Morgan. If he was not, I am sure he ought to 
have been ; and with the reader's concurrence, will 
therefore create him a doctor on the spot. Every man 
has reason to rejoice who enjoys the advantage of a 
public training. I condemned, and do condemn, the 
practice of sending out into such stormy exposures 
those who are as yet too young, too dependent on 
female gentleness, and endowed with sensibilities origi 

(41) 



42 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

nally too exquisite for such a warfare. But at nine or 
ten the masculine energies of the character are begin- 
ning to develop themselves ; or, if not, no discipline 
will better aid in their development than the bracing 
intercourse of a great English classical school. Even 
the selfish are there forced into accommodating them- 
selves to a public standard of generosity, and the efiemi- 
nate in conforming to a rule of manliness. I was myself 
at two public schools, and I think with gratitude of the 
benefits which I reaped from both ; as also I think with 
gratitude of that guardian in whose quiet household I 
learned Latin so effectually. 

There is not in the universe such an Areopagus for fair 
play, and abhorrence of all crooked ways, as an Eng- 
lish mob, or one of the time-honored English " founda- 
tion " schools. But my own first introduction to such 
an establishment was under peculiar and contradictory 
circumstances. When my " rating," or graduation in 
the school, was to be settled, naturally my altitude (to 
speak astronomically) was taken by my proficiency in 
Greek. But here I had no advantage over others of 
my age. My guardian was a feeble Grecian, and had 
not excited my ambition ; so that I could barely con- 
strue books as easy as the Greek Testament and the 
Iliad. This was considered quite well enough for my 
age ; but still it caused me to be placed under the care 
of Mr. Wilkins, the second master out of four, and not 
under Dr. Morgan himself. Within one month, how- 
ever, my talent for Latin verses, which had by this time 
gathered strength and expansion, became known. Sud- 
denly I was honored as never was man or boy since 
Mordecai the Jew. Without any colorable relation to 



WARFARE OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL. 43 

the doctor's jurisdiction, I was now weekly paraded 
for distinction at the supreme tribunal of the school ; 
out of which, at first, grew nothing but a sunshine of 
approbation delightful to my heart. Within six weeks 
all this had changed. The approbation indeed con- 
tinued, and the public expression of it. Neither would 
there, in the ordinary course, have been any painful 
reaction from jealousy, or fretful resistance, to the 
soundness of my pretensions ; since it was sufficiently 
known to such of my school-fellows as stood on my own 
level in the school, that I, who had no male relatives 
but military men, and those in India, could not have 
benefited by any clandestine aid. But, unhappily. Dr. 
Morgan was at that time dissatisfied with some points 
in the progress of his head class ; and, as it soon ap- 
peared, was continually throwing in their teeth the 
brilliancy of my verses at eleven or twelve, by compari- 
son with theirs at seventeen, eighteen, and even nine- 
teen. I had observed him sometimes pointing to myself, 
and was perplexed at seeing this gesture followed by 
gloomy looks, and what French reporters call " sensa- 
tion," in these young men, whom naturally I viewed 
with awe as my leaders — boys that were called young 
men, men that were reading Sophocles, (a name that 
carried with it the sound of something seraphic to my 
ears), and who had never vouchsafed to waste a word 
on such a child as myself. The day was come, how- 
ever, when all that would be changed. One of these 
leaders strode up to me in the public play ground, and, 
delivering a blow on my shoulder, which was not 
intended to hurt me, but as a mere formula of iutro^ 
duction, asked me " what the devil I meant by bolting 



44 BEAUTIES OF DF QUINCEY. 

out of the course, and annoying other people in that 
manner. Were ' other people ' to have no rest for me 
and my verses, which, after all, were horribly bad ? " 
There might have been some difficulty in returning an 
answer to this address, but none was required. I was 
briefly admonished to see that I wrote worse for the 

future, or else . At this aposiopesis I looked 

inquiringly at the speaker, and he filled up the chasm 
by saying that he would '' annihilate " me. Could any 
person fail to be aghast at such a demand ? I was to 
write worse than my own standard, which, by his ac- 
count of my verses, must be difficult; and I was to 
write worse than himself, which might be impossible. 
My feelings revolted against so arrogant a demand, 
unless it had been far otherwise expressed ; if death 
on the spot had awaited me, I could not have controlled 
myself; and on the next occasion for sending up verses 
to the head master, so far from attending to the orders 
issued, I double shotted my guns ; double applause 
descended on myself; but I remarked with some awe, 
though not repenting of what I had done, that double 
confusion seemed to agitate the ranks of my enemies. 
Amongst them loomed out in the distance my " annihi- 
lating" friend, who shook his huge fist at me, but with 
something like a grim smile about his eyes. He took 
an early opportunity of paying his respects to me again, 
saying, " You little devil, do you call this writing your 
worst?" "No," 1 replied; "I call it writing my 
best." The annihilator, as it turned out, was really a 
good natured young man ; but he was on the wing for 
Cambridge ; and with the rest, or some of them, I con- 
tinued to wage war for more than a year. And yet, 



WARFARE OP A PUBLIC SCHOOL. 45 

for a word spoken with kindness, how readily I would 
have resigned (had it been altogether at my own 
choice to do so) the peacock's feather in my cap as the 
merest of banbles. Undoubtedly, praise sounded sweet 
in my ears also ; but that was nothing by comparison 
with what stood on the other side. I detested distinc- 
tions that were connected with mortification to others ; 
and, even if I could have got over tliat^ the eternal 
feud fretted and tormented my nature. The contest 
was terminated for me by my removal from the school, 
in consequence of a very threatening illness affecting 
my head ; but it lasted more than a year, and it did 
not close before several among my public enemies had 
become my private friends. 

From the Bath Grammar school I was removed, in 
consequence of an accident, by which at first it was 
supposed that my skull had been fractured ; and tha 
surgeon who attended me at one time talked of trepan- 
ning. This was an awful word ; but at present I doubt 
whether in reality any thing very serious had hap- 
pened. In fact, I was always under a nervous panic 
for my head, and certainly exaggerated my internal 
feelings without meaning to do so ; and this misled the 
medical attendants. During a long illness which suo- 
ceeded, my mother, amongst other books past all count- 
ing, read to me, in Hoole's translation, the whole of 
the " Orlando Furioso ; " meaning by the whole the 
entire twenty-four books into which Hoole had con- 
densed the original forty-six of Ariosto ; and, from 
my own experience at that time, I am disposed to think 
that the homeliness of this version is an advantage, 
from not calling off the attention at all from the nar- 



46 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

ration to the narrator. At this time also I first 
read the " Paradise Lost ; " but, oddly enough, in the 
edition of Bentley, that great dioQdani]g, (or pseudo 
restorer of the text). At the close of my illness, the 
head master called upon my mother, in company with 
his son-in-law, Mr. Wilkins, as did a certain Irish 
Colonel Bowes, who had sons at the school, requesting 
earnestly, in terms most flattering to myself, that 1 
might be suffered to remain there. But it illustrates 
my mother's moral austerity, that she was shocked at 
my hearing compliments to my own merits, and was 
altogether disturbed at what doubtless these gentlemen 
expected to see received with maternal pride. She 
declined to let me continue at the Bath School ; and I 
went to another, at Winkfield, in the county of Wilts, 
of which the chief recommendation lay in the religious 
character of the master. 



I ENTER THE WORLD. 

Yes, at this stage of my life, viz., in my fifteenth 
year, and from this sequestered school, ankle deep I 
first stepped into the world. At Winkfield I had staid 
about a year, or not much more, when 1 received a 
letter from a young friend of my own age. Lord West- 
port, the son of Lord Altamont, inviting me to accom- 
pany him to Ireland for the ensuing summer and au- 
tumn. This invitation was repeated by his tutor ; and 
my mother, after some consideration, allowed me to 
accept it. 

Li the spring of 1800, accordingly, I went up to 
Eton, for the purpose of joining my friend. Here I 
several times visited the gardens of the queen's villa at 
Frogmore ; and, privileged by my young friend's intro- 
duction, I had opportunities of seeing and hearing the 
queen and all the princesses ; which at that time was a 
novelty in my life, naturally a good deal prized. Lord 
Westport's mother had been, before her marriao"e, 
Lady Louisa Howe, daughter to the great admiral. Ear] 
Howe, and intimately known to the royal family, who, 
on her account, took a continual and especial notice of 
her son. 

On one of these occasions I had the honor of a brief 
interview with the king. Lord Westport and I were 

(47) 



48 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

amusing ourselves when a turn brought us full in view 
of a royal party coming along one of the walks at 
Frogmore. We were, in fact, theorizing and practi- 
cally commenting on the art of throwing stones. Boys 
have a peculiar contempt for female attempts in that 
way. For, besides that girls fling wide of the mark, 
with a certainty that might have won the applause of 
Galerius, there is a peculiar sling and rotary motion of 
the arm in launching a stone, which no girl ever can 
attain. From ancient practice, I was somewhat of a 
proficient in this art, and was discussing the philoso- 
phy of female failures, illustrating my doctrines with 
pebbles, as the case happened to demand ; whilst Lord 
Westport was practising on the peculiar whirl of the 
wrist with a shilling ; when suddenly he turned the 
head of the coin towards me with a significant glance, 
and in a low voice he muttered some words, of which I 
caught " Grace of God^'' " France and Ireland^'' 
" Defender of the Faith, and so forthP This solemn 
recitation of the legend on the coin was meant as a 
fanciful way of apprising me that the king was ap- 
proaching ; for Lord W. had himself lost somewhat of 
the awe natural to a young person in a first situation 
of this nature, through his frequent admissions to the 
royal presence. For my own part, I was yet a stran- 
ger even to the king's person. I had, indeed, seen 
most or all the princesses in the way I have mentioned 
above ; and occasionally, in the streets of Windsor, 
the sudden disappearance of all hats from all heads 
had admonished me that some royal personage or other 
was then traversing (or, if not traversing, was cross- 



I ENTER THE WORLD. 49 

ing) the street ; but either his majesty had never been 
of the party, or, from distance, I had failed to distin- 
guish him. Now, for the first time, I was meeting him 
nearly face to face ; for, though the walk we occupied 
was not that in which the royal party were moving, it 
ran so near it, and was connected by so many cross 
walks at short intervals, that it was a matter of neces- 
sity for us, as we were now observed, to go and present 
ourselves. What happened was pretty nearly as fol- 
lows : The king, having first spoken with great kind- 
ness to my companion, inquiring circumstantially about 
his mother and grandmother, as persons particularly 
well known to himself, then turned his eye upon me. 
My name, it seems, had been communicated to him ; he 
did not, therefore, inquire about that. Was I of Eton ? 
This was his first question. I replied that I was not, 
but hoped I should be. Had I a father living ? 1 had 
not: my father had been dead about eight years. 
" But you have a mother ?" I had. " And she thinks 
of sending you to Eton?" I -answered, that she had 
expressed such an intention in my hearing ; but I was 
not sure whether that might not be in order to waive 
an argument with the person to whom she spoke, who 
happened to have been an Etonian. " 0, but all peo- 
ple think highly of Eton ; every body praises Eton. 
Your mother does right to inquire ; there can be no 
harm in that ; but the more she inquires, the more she 
will be satisfied — that I can answer for." 

Next came a question which had been suggested by 
my name. Had my family come into England with 
the Huguenots at the revocation of the edict of Nantz ? 
3 



50 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

This was a tender point with me : of all things I could 
not endure to be supposed of French descent ; yet it 
was a vexation I had constantly to face, as most peo- 
ple supposed that my name argued a French origin ; 
whereas a Norman origin argued pretty certainly an 
origin not French. I replied, with some haste, " Please 
your majesty, the family has been in England since the 
conquest." It is probable that I colored, or showed 
some mark of discomposure, with which, however, the 
king was not displeased, for he smiled, and said, " How 
do you know that ? " Here I was at a loss for a mo- 
ment how to answer ; for I was sensible that it did not 
become me to occupy the king's attention with any 
long stories or traditions about a subject so unimpor- 
tant as my own family ; and yet it was necessary that 
I should say something, unless I would be thought to 
have denied my Huguenot descent upon no reason or 
authority. After a moment's hesitation, I said, in ef- 
fect, that the family from which I traced my descent 
had certainly been a great and leading one at the era 
of the barons' wars, as also in one at least of the cru- 
sades ; and that I had myself seen many notices of this 
family, not only in books of heraldry, &c., but in the 
very earliest of all English books. " And what book 
was that? " " Robert of Gloucester's ' Metrical Chron- 
icle,' which I understood, from internal evidence, to 
have been written about 1280." The king smiled 
again, and said, " I know, I know." But what it was 
that he knew, long afterwards puzzled me to conjec- 
ture. I now imagine, however, that he meant to claim 
a knowledge of the book I referred to — a thing which 



I ENTER THE WORLD. 51 

at that time I thought improbable, supposing the king's 
acquaintance with literature not to be very extensive, 
nor likely to have comprehended any knowledge at all 
of the black-letter period. But in this belief I was 
greatly mistaken, as I was afterwards fully convinced 
by the best evidence from various quarters. 

During the whole dialogue, I did not even once re- 
mark that hesitation and iteration of words generally 
attributed to George III. ; indeed, so generally, that it 
must often have existed ; but in this case, I suppose 
that the brevity of his sentences operated to deliver 
him from any embarrassment of utterance, such as 
might have attended longer and more complex senten- 
ces, where some anxiety was natural to overtake the 
thoughts as they arose. When we observed that the 
king had paused in his stream of questions, which suc- 
ceeded rapidly to each other, we understood it was a 
signal of dismissal ; and making a profound obeisance, 
we retired backwards a few steps. His majesty smiled 
in a very gracious manner, waved his hand towards us, 
and said something (I did not know what) in a pecu- 
liarly kind accent ; he then turned round, and the 
whole party along with him ; which set us at liberty 
without impropriety to turn to the right about ourselves, 
and make our egress from the gardens. 

This incident, to me at my age, was very naturally 
one of considerable interest. One reflection it suggest- 
ed afterwards, which was this; Could it be likely that 
much truth of a general nature, bearing upon man and 
social interests, could ever reach the ear of a king, un- 
der the etiquette of a court, and under that one rule 
which seemed singly sufficient to foreclose all natural 



52 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCE Y. 

avenues to truth? — the rule, I mean, by which it is 
forbidden to address a question to the king. 

However, to leave dissertation behind me, and to re- 
sume the thread of my narrative, an incident, which 
about this period impressed me even more profoundly 
than my introduction to a royal presence, was my first 
visit to London. 



VI. 

THE NATION OF LONDON. 

It was a most heavenly day in May of tliis year 
(1800) when I first beheld and first entered this mighty 
wilderness, the city — no, not the city, but the nation — 
of London. We, upon this occasion, were in an open 
carriage, and, chiefly (as I imagine) to avoid the 
dust, we approached London by rural lanes, where any 
such could be found, or, at least, along by-roads, quiet 
and shady, collateral to the main roads. In that mode 
of approach we missed some features of the sublimity 
belonging to any of the common approaches upon a 
main road ; we missed the whirl and the uproar, the 
tumult, and the agitation, which continually thicken 
and thicken throughout the last dozen miles before you 
reach the suburbs. Already at three stages' distance, 
(say forty miles from London), upon some of the 
greatest roads, the dim presentiment of some vast 
capital reaches you obscurely and like a misgiving. 
This blind sympathy with a mighty but unseen object, 
some vast magnetic range of Alps, in your neighbor- 
hood, continues to increase you know not how. 

Much of the feeling which belongs to the outside of 
London, in its approaches for the last few miles, I had 
lost, in consequence of the stealthy route of by-roads, 
lying near Uxbridge and Watford, through which we 
crept into the suburbs. But for that reason, the more 

(53) 



54 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

abrupt and startling had been the effect of emergina 
somewhere into the Edgeware Road, and soon after- 
wards into the very streets of London itself; tbrongli 
what streets, or even what quarter of London, is now 
totally obliterated from my mind, having perhaps never 
been comprehended. All that I remember is one mo- 
notonous awe and blind sense of mysterious grandeur 
and Babylonian confusion, which seemed to pursue and 
to invest the whole equipage of human life, as we 
moved for nearly two hours* through streets ; some- 
times brought to anchor for ten minutes or more 
by what is technically called a "lock," that is, a line 
of carriages of every description inextricably massed, 
and obstructing each other, far as the eye could stretch ; 
and then, as if under an enchanter's rod, the " lock" 
seemed to thaw ; motion spread with the fluent race of 
light or sound through the whole ice-bound mass, until 
the subtile influence reached us also, who were again 
absorbed into the great rush of flying carriages ; or, at 
times, we turned off into some less tumultuous street, but 
of the same mile-long character ; and finally, drawing 
up about noon, we alighted at some place, which is as 
little within my distinct remembrance as the route by 
which we reached it. 

For what had we come ? To see London. And 
what were the limits within which we proposed to 
crowd that little feat ? At 5 o'clock we were to dine 
at Porters , a seat of Lord Westport's grand - 



♦ *'Two /lowrs." — This slow progress must, however, in part be ascrib- 
ed to Mr. G 's non-acquaintance with the roads, both town and 

rural, and the whole line of our progress from Uxbridge 



THE NATION OF LONDON. 55 

father ; and, from the distance, it was necessary that 
we should leave London at half past three ; so that a 
little more than three hours were all that we had for 
London. Our charioteer, my friend's tutor, was sum- 
moned away from us on business until that hour ; and 
we were left, therefore, entirely to ourselves and to our 
own skill in turning the time to the best account, for 
contriving (if such a thing were possible) to do some 
thing or other which, by any fiction of courtesy, or 
constructively, so as to satisfy a lawyer, or in a sense 
sufficient to win a wager, might be taken and received 
for having " seen London." 

What could be done ? We sat down, I remember, 
in a mood of despondency, to consider. The spectacles 
were too many by thousands ; inopes nos copia fecit ; 
our very wealth made us poor ; and the choice was 
distracted. But which of them all could be thought 
general or representative enough to stand for the uni- 
verse of London ? We could not traverse the whole 
circumference of this mighty orb ; that was clear ; and, 
therefore, the next best thing was to place ourselves as 
much as possible in some relation to the spectacles of 
London, which might answer to the centre. Yet how ? 
That sounded well and metaphysical ; but what did it 
mean if acted upon ? What was the centre of London 
for any purpose whatever, latitudinarian or longitudi- 
narian, literary, social, or mercantile, geographical, 
astronomical, or (as Mrs. Malaprop kindly suggests) 
diabolical ? Apparently that we should stay at our inn ; 
for in that way we seemed best to distribute our pres- 
ence equally amongst all, viz., by going to none in par- 
ticular. 



56 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

In debating the matter, we lost lialf an hour ; but at 
length we reduced the question to a choice between 
Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral. I know 
not that we could have chosen better. The rival edi- 
fices, as we understood from the waiter, were about 
equidistant from our own station ; but, being too remote 
from each other to allow of our seeing both, " we 
tossed up," to settle the question between the elder 
lady and the younger. " Heads " came up, which 
stood for the Abbey. But, as neither of us was quite 
satisfied with this decision, we agreed to make another 
appeal to the wisdom of chance, second thoughts being 
best. This time the Cathedral turned up ; and so it 
came to pass that, with us, the having seen London 
meant having seen St. Paul's. 

The first view of St. Paul's, it may be supposed, 
overwhelmned us with awe ; and I did not at that time 
imagine that the sense of magnitude could be more 
deeply impressed. One thing interrupted our pleasure. 
The supei-b objects of curiosity within the cathedral 
were shown for separate fees. There were seven, I 
think ; and any one could be seen independently of the 
rest for a few pence. The whole amount was a trifle ; 
fourteen pence, I think ; but we were followed by a 
sort of persecution — " Would we not see the bell ? " 
" Would we not see the model ? " " Surely we would not 
go away without visiting the whispering gallery ? " — 
solicitations which troubled the silence and sanctity of 
the place, and must tease others as it then teased us, 
who wished to contemplate in quiet this great monument 
of the national grandeur, which was at that very time 
beginning to take a station also in the land, as a de- 



TUE NATION OP LONDON. 57 

pository for the dust of her heroes.* What struck us 
most in the whole interior of the pile was the view 
taken from the spot immediately under the dome, being, 
in fact, the very same which, five years afterwards, 
received the remains of Lord Nelson. In one of the 
aisles going oif from this centre, we saw the flags of 
France, Spain, and Holland, the whole trophies of the 
war, swinging pompously, and expanding their massy 
draperies, slowly and heavily, in the upper gloom, as 
they were swept at intervals by currents of air. At 
this moment we were provoked by the showman at our 
elbow renewing his vile iteration of " Two-pence, gentle- 
men ; no more than two-pence for each ;" and so on^ 
until we left the place. The same complaint has often 
been made as to Westminster Abbey. Where the 
wrong lies, or where it commences, I know not. Cer- 
tainly I nor any uian can have a right to expect that 
the poor men who attended us should give up their 
time for nothing, or even to be angry with them for a 
sort of persecution, on the degree of which possibly 
might depend the comfort of their own families. — 
Thoughts of famishing children at home leave little 
room for nice regards of delicacy abroad. The indi- 
viduals, therefore, might or might not be blamable. 
But in any case, the system is palpably wrong. The 
nation is entitled to a free enjoyment of its own public 
monuments ; not free only in the sense of being gratui- 
tous, but free also from the molestation of showmen, 

* Already monuments had been voted by the House tf Commons in 
this cathedral, and I am not sure but they were nearly completed, to 
two captains who had fallen at the Nile. 



58 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

with their imperfect knowledge and their vulgar senti- 
ment. 

London we left in haste, to keep an engagement of 
some standing at the Earl Howe's, ni}^ friend's grand- 
father. This great admiral, who had filled so large a 
station in the public eye, being the earliest among the 
naval heroes of England in the first war of the revolu- 
tion, and the only one of noble birth, I should have 
been delighted to see ; St. Paul's, and its naval monu- 
ments to Captain Eiou and Captain , together with 

its floating pageantries of conquered flags, having 
awakened within me, in a form of peculiar solemnity, 
those patriotic remembrances of past glories, which 
all boys feel so much more vividly than men can do, in 
whom the sensibility to such impressions is blunted. 
Lord Howe, however, I was not destined to see ; he 
had died about a year before. Another death there 
had been, and very recently, in the family, and under 
circumstances peculiarly startling ; and the spirits of 
the whole house were painfully depressed by that event 
at the time of our visit. 

From Porters, after a few days' visit, we returned to 
Eton. Her majesty about this time gave some splendid 
fetes at Frogmore, to one or two of which she had 
directed that we should be invited. The invitation 
was, of course, on my friend's account ; but her ma- 
jesty had condescended to direct that I, as his \isitor, 
should be specially included. Lord Westport, young 
as he was, had become tolerably indifferent about such 
things ; but to me such a scene was a novelty ; and, on 
that account, it was settled we should go as early as 
was permissible. We did go ; and I was not sorry to 



THE NATION OP LONDON. 69 

have had the gratification of witnessing (if it were but 
for once or twice) the splendors of a royal party. But, 
after the first edge of expectation was taken ofi", — after 
the vague uncertainties of rustic ignorance had given 
place to absolute realities, and the eye had become a 
little familiar with the flashing of the jewelry, — I 
began to suffer uuder the constraints incident to a 
young person in such a situation — the situation, namely, 
of sedentary passiveness, where one is acted upon, but 
does not act. The music, in fact, was all that continu- 
ed to delight me ; and, but for that, I believe I should 
have had some difficulty in avoiding so monstrous an 
indecorum as yawning. I revise this faulty expression, 
however, on the spot ; not the music only it was, but 
the music combined with the dancing, that so deeply 
impressed me. The ball room — a temporary erection, 
with something of the character of a pavilion aboul 
it — wore an elegant and festal air ; the part allotted to 
the dancers being fenced off by a gilded lattice work, 
and ornamented beautifully from the upper part with 
drooping festoons of flowers. But all the luxury that 
spoke to the eye merely faded at once by the side of 
impassioned dancing sustained by impassioned music. 
Of all the scenes which this world offers, none is to me 
so profoundly interesting, none (I say it deliberately) 
so afi'ecting, as the spectacle of men and women floating 
through the mazes of a dance ; under these conditions, 
however, that the music shall be rich, resonant, and 
festal, the execution of the dancers perfect, and the 
dance itself of a character to admit of free, fluent, and 
continuous motion. 
This pleasure, as always on similar occasions, I had 



60 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

at present ; but naturally in a degree corresponding to 
the circumstances of royal splendor through which the 
scene revolved ; and, if I have spent rather more 
words than should reasonably have been requisite in 
describing any obvious state of emotion, it is not be- 
cause, in itself, it is either vague or doubtful, but be- 
cause it is difi&cult, without calling upon a reader for a 
little reflection, to convince him that there is not some- 
thing paradoxical in the assertion, that joy and festal 
pleasure, of the highest kind, are liable to a natural 
combination with solemnity, or even with melancholy 
the most profound. Yet, to speak in the mere simplici- 
ty of truth, so mysterious is human nature, and so little 
to be read by him who runs, that almost every weighty 
aspect of truth upon that theme will be found at first 
sight to be startling, or sometimes paradoxical. 

The pleasure of which I have been speaking belongs 
to all such scenes ; but on this particular occasion there 
was also something more. To see persons in " the 
body " of whom you have been reading in newspapers 
from the very earliest of your reading days, — those, 
who have hitherto been great ideas in your childish 
thoughts, to see and to hear moving and talking as 
carnal existences amongst other human beings, — had, 
for the first half hour or so, a singular and strange 
effect. But this naturally waned rapidly after it had 
once begun to wane. And when these first startling 
Impressions of novelty had worn oif, it must be con- 
fessed that the peculiar circumstances attaching to a 
royal ball were not favorable to its joyousness or genial 
spirit of enjoyment. 

Meantime, as respected myself individually, I had 



THE NATION OF LONDON. 61 

reason to be grateful : every kindness and attention 
were shown to me. My invitation I was sensible that I 
owed entirely to my noble friend. But, having- been 
invited, I felt assured, from what passed, that it was 
meant and provided that I should not, by any possi- 
bility, be suffered to think myself overlooked. My 
friend and I having staid nearly four hours, a time quite 
sufficient to express a proper sense of the honor, we 
departed ; and, on emerging into the open high road, 
we threw up our hats and huzzaed, meaning no sort of 
disrespect, but from uncontrollable pleasure in recovered 
liberty. 

Soon after this we left Eton for Ireland. Our first 
destination being Dublin, of course we went by Holy- 
head. The route at that time, from Southern England 
to Dublin, did not (as in elder and in later days) go 
round by Chester. A few miles after leaving Shrews- 
bury, somewhere about Oswestry, it entered North 
Wales ; a stage farther brought us to the celebrated 
vale of Llangollen ; and, on reaching the approach to 
this about sunset on a beautiful evening of June, I first 
found myself amongst the mountains — a feature in 
natural scenery for which, from my earliest days, it was 
not extravagant to say that I had hungered and thirsted. 
In no one expectation of my life have I been less disap- 
pointed ; and I may add, that no one enjoyment has less 
decayed or palled upon my continued experience. 

At the Head (to call it by its common colloquial 
name) we were detained a few days in those unsteaming 
times by foul winds. Our time, however, thanks to the 
hospitality of a certain Captain Skinner on that station, 
did not hang heavy on our hands, though we were im 



62 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

prisoned, as it were, on a dull rock ; for Holyhead itself 
is a little island of rock, an insulated dependency of 
Anglesea ; which, again, is a little insulated dependency 
of North-Wales. 

Landing about three miles from Dublin, (according 
to my present remembrance at Dunleary), we were not 
long in reaching Sackville Street. 



yii. 



DUBLIN. 



In Sackville Street stood the town house of Lord Al- 
tamont ; and here, in the breakfast room, we found the 
Earl seated. Long and inthnately as I had known 
Lord Westport, it so happened that 1 had never seen 
his father, who had, indeed, of late almost pledged him- 
self to a continued residence in Ireland by his own 
patriotic earnestness as an agricultural improver ; whilst 
for his soil, under the difficulties and delays at that 
time of all travelling, any residence whatever in Eng- 
land seemed preferable, but especially a residence with 
his mother amongst the relatives of his distinguished 
English grandfather, and in such close neighborhood to 
Eton. 

Hence the long three-years' interval which had sepa- 
rated father and son ; and hence my own nervous ap- 
prehension, as we were racing through the suburbs of 
Dublin, that I should unavoidably lay a freezing re- 
straint upon that reiinion to which, after such a separa- 
tion, both father and son must have looked forward 
with anticipation so anxious. Such cases of uninten- 
tional intrusion are at times inevitable ; but, even to the 
least sensitive, they are always distressing ; most of all 
they are so to the intruder, who in fact feels himself in 
the odd position of a criminal without a crime. 

But there was no cause for similar fears at present ; 

(63) 



64 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

SO uniformly considerate iu his kindness was Lord Alta- 
mont. It is true, that Lord Westport, as an only child, 
and a child to be proud of, — for he was at that time 
rather handsome, and conciliated general good will by 
his engaging manners, — was viewed by his father with 
an anxiety of love that sometimes became almost pain- 
ful to witness. But this natural self-surrender to a first 
involuntary emotion. Lord Altamont did not suffer to 
usurp any such lengthened expression as might too pain- 
fully have reminded me of being " one too many." One 
solitary half minute being paid down as a tribute to the 
sanctities of the case, his next care was to withdraw 
me, the stranger, from an oppressive feeling of stranger- 
ship. And accordingly, so far from realizing the sense 
of being an intruder, in one minute under his courteous 
welcome I had come to feel that, as the companion of 
his one darling upon earth, me also he comprehended 
within his paternal regards. 

Amongst the splendid spectacles which I witnessed, 
as the most splendid I may mention an installation of 
the Knights of St. Patrick. There were six knights 
installed on this occasion, one of the six being Lord 
Altamont. One chief reason, indeed, which detained 
us in Dublin, was the necessity of staying for this par- 
ticular installation. At one time, Lord Altamont had 
designed to take his son and myself for the two esquires 
who attend the new made knight, according to the 
ritual of this ceremony ; but that plan was laid aside, 
on learning that the other five knights were to be at- 
tended by adults ; and thus, from being partakers as 
actors, my friend and I became simple spectators of this 



DUBLIN. 65 

splendid scene, whicli took place in the Cathedral of 
St. Patrick. 

One other public scene there was, about this time, in 
Dublin, to the eye less captivating, but far more so in a 
moral sense ; more significant practically, more burden- 
ed with hope and fear. This was the final ratification 
of the bill which united Ireland to Great Britain. I 
do not know that any one public act, or celebration, or 
solemnity, in my time, did, or could, so much engage 
my profoundest sympathies. 

This great day of union had been long looked for- 
ward to by me ; with some mixed feelings also by my 
young friend, for he had an Irish heart, and was jealous 
of whatever appeared to touch the banner of Ireland. 

Thus we were set at liberty from Dublin. Parlia- 
ments, and installations, and masked balls, with all 
other secondary splendors in celebration of primary 
splendors, reflex glories that reverberated original 
glories, at length had ceased to shine upon the Irish 
metropolis. The " season," as it is called in great cities, 
was over ; unfortunately the last season that was ever 
destined to illuminate the society or to stimulate the 
domestic trade of Dublin. It began to be thought 
scandalous to be found in town ; nobody, in fact remain- 
ed, except some two hundred thousand people, who 
never did, nor ever would, wear ermine ; and in all Ire- 
land there remained nothing at all to attract, except that 
which no king, and no two houses, can by any conspir- 
acy abolish, viz., the beauty of her most verdant scene- 
ry. I speak of that part which chiefly it is that I know, 
— the scenery of the west — Connaught beyond other 
provinces, and in Connaught, Mayo beyond other coun- 



bb BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

ties. There it was, and in the county next adjoining 
that, Lord Altamont's large estates were situated, the 
family mansion and beautiful park being in Mayo. 
Thither, as nothing else now remained to divert us from 
what, in fact, we had thirsted for throughout the heats 
of summer, and throughout the magnificences of the 
capital, at length we set off by movements as slow and 
circuituous as those of any royal progress in the reign 
of Elizabeth. Making but short journeys on each day, 
and resting always at the house of some private friend, 
I thus obtained an opportunity of seeing the old Irish 
nobility and gentry more extensively, and on a more 
intimate footing than I had hoped for. I remarked that, 
in the midst of hospitality the most unbounded, and the 
amplest comfort, some of these were conspicuously in 
the rear of the English commercial gentry, as to modern 
refinements of luxury. There was at the same time an 
apparent strength of character, as if formed amidst 
turbulent scenes, and a raciness of manner, which were 
fitted to interest a stranger profoundly, and to impress 
themselves oir his recollection. 



VIII. 

PREMATURE MANHOOD. 

It was late in October, or early in November, that 1 
quitted Connaught with Lord Westport ; and very 
slowly, making many leisurely deviations from the direct 
route, travelled back to Dublin. Thence, after some 
little stay, we recrossed St. George's Channel, landed 
at Holyhead, and then, by exactly the same route as we 
had pursued in early June, we posted through Bangor, 
Conway, Llanrwst, Llangollen, until again we found 
ourselves in England, and, as a matter of course, mak- 
ing for Birmingham. But why making for Birmingham ? 
Simply because Birmingham, under the old dynasty of 
stage coaches and post chaises, was the centre of our 
travelling system, and held in England something of 
that rank which the golden mile-stone of Rome held in 
the Italian peninsula. 

At Birmingham it was (which I, like myriads beside, 
had traversed a score of times without ever yet having 
visited it as a terminus ad queTii) that I parted with my 
friend Lord Westport. His route lay through Oxford ; 
and stopping, therefore, no longer than was necessary 
to harness fresh horses, — an operation, however, which 
was seldom accomplished in less than half an hour at that 
era, — he went on directly to Stratford. My own des- 
tination was yet doubtful. I had been directed, in 
Dublin, to inquire at the Birmingham post office for a 

(67) 



68 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

letter which would guide my motions. There, ac x)rd- 
ingly, upon sending for it, lay the expected letter from 
my mother ; from which I learned that my sister was 
visiting at Laxton, a seat of Lord Carbery's in North- 
amptonshire, and giving me to understand, that, during 
my residence at this place, some fixed resolution would 
be taken and announced to me in regard to the future 
disposal of my time, during the two or three years be- 
fore I should be old enough on the English system for 
matriculating at Oxford or Cambridge. In tho poor 
countries of Europe, where they cannot afford double 
sets of scholastic establishments, — having, therefore, no 
splendid schools, such as are, in fact, peculiar to Eng- 
land, — they are compelled to throw the duties of such 
schools upon their universities ; and consequently you 
see boys of thirteen and fourteen, or even younger, 
crowding such institutions, which, in fact, they ruin for 
all higher functions. But England, whose regal estab- 
lishments of both classes emancipate her from this de- 
pendency, sends her young men to college not until they 
have ceased to be boys — not earlier, therefore, than 
eighteen. 

But when, by what test, by what indication, does 
manhood commence ? Physically by one criterion, 
legally by another, morally by a third, intellectually by 
a fourth — and all indefinite. Equator, absolute equa- 
tor, there is none. Between the two spheres of youth 
and age, perfect and imperfect manhood, as in all anal- 
ogous cases there is no strict line of bisection. The 
change is a large process, accomplished within a large 
and corresponding space ; having, perhaps, some central 
or equatorial line, but lying, like that of our earth, be- 



PREMATURE MANHOOD. 69 

tween certain tropics, or limits widely separated. This 
intertropical region may, and generally does, cover a 
number of years ; and therefore, it is hard to say, even 
for an assigned case, b}^ any tolerable approximation, at 
what precise era it would be reasonable to describe the 
individual as having ceased to be a boy, and as having 
attained his inauguration as a man. One such criterion, 
and one onl}^, as I believe, there is — all others are va- 
riable and uncertain. It lies in the reverential feeling, 
sometime suddenly developed, towards woman, and the 
idea of woman. From that moment when women cease 
to be regarded with carelessness, and when the ideal 
of womanhood, in its total pomp of loveliness and 
purity, dawns like some vast aurora upon the mind, 
boyhood has ended ; childish thoughts and inclinations 
have passed away for ever ; and the gravity of man- 
hood, with the self-respecting views of manhood, have 
commenced. 

" Mentemque priorem 
Expulit, atque horainem toto sibi cedere jussit 
Pectore." — Lucan. 

For more than a year, every thing connected with 
schools and the business of schools had been growing 
more and more hateful to me. At first, however, my dis- 
gust had been merely the disgust of weariness and pride. 
But now, at this crisis, (for crisis it was virtually to me), 
when a premature development of my whole mind was 
rushing in like a cataract, forcing channels for itself 
and for the new tastes which it introduced, my disgust 
was no longer simply intellectual, but had deepened into 
a moral sense as of some inner dignit}^ continually vio- 
lated. Once the petty round of school tasks had been 



70 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

felt as a molestation ; but now, at last, as a degrada- 
tion. Constant conversation with grown up men for the 
last half year, and upon topics oftentimes of the gravest 
order, — the responsibility that had always in some 
slight degree settled upon myself since I had become 
the eldest surviving son of my family, but of late much 
more so when circumstances had thrown me as an Eng- 
lish stranger upon the society of distinguished Irish- 
men, — more, however, than all beside, tlie inevitable 
rebound and countergrowth of internal dignity from the 
everlasting commerce with lofty speculations, these 
agencies in constant operation had imbittered my school 
disgust, until it was travelling fast into a mania. Pre- 
cisely at this culminating point of my self-conflict did a 

scene occur which I have described with Miss Bl 

In that hour another element, which assuredly was not 
wanted, fell into the seething caldron of new born im- 
pulses, that, like the magic caldron of Medea, was now 
transforming me into a new creature. Then first and 
suddenly I brought powerfully before myself the change 
which was worked in the aspects of society by the pres- 
ence of woman, pure, thoughtful, noble, coming before 
me as a Pandora crowned with perfections. Right over 
against this ennobling spectacle, with equal suddenness^ 
I placed the odious spectacle of school-boy society — no 
matter in what region of the earth ; school-boy society, 
so frivolous in the matter of its disputes, often so brutal 
in the manner ; so childish, and yet so remote from sim- 
plicity ; so foolishly careless, and yet so revoltingly 
selfish ; dedicated ostensibly to learning, and yet be- 
yond any section of human beings so conspicuously 
ignorant. Was it indeed that heavenly which I was 



PREMATURE MANHOOD. 71 

soon to exchange for this earthly ? It seemed to me, 
when contemplating the possibilitj^ that I could yet have 
nearly three years to pass in such society as this, that 
I heard some irresistible voice saying, Lay aside thy 
fleshly robes of humanity, and enter for a season into 
some brutal incarnation. 

But what connection had this painful prospect with 
Laxton ? Why should it press upon my anxieties in 
approaching that mansion, more than it had done at 
Westport ? Naturally enough, in part, because every 
day brought me nearer to the horror from which I 
recoiled : my return to England would recall the atten- 
tion of my guardians to the question, which as yet had 
slumbered; and the knowledge that I had reached 
Northamptonshire would precipitate their decision. Ob- 
scurely, besides, through a hint which had reached me, 
I guessed what this decision was likely to be, and it 
took the very worst shape it could have taken. All 
this increased my agitation from hour to hour. But 
all this was quickened and barbed by the certainty of 
so immediately meeting Lady Carbery. To her it was, 
and to her only, that I could look for any useful advice 
or any effectual aid. She, over my mother, as in turn 
my mother over Aer, exercised considerable influence ; 
whilst my mother's power was very seldom disturbed 
by the other guardians. The mistress of Laxton it 
was, therefore, whose opinion upon the case would vir- 
tually be decisive; since, if she saw no reasonable en- 
couragement to any contest with my guardians, I felt 
too surely that my own uncountenanced and unaided 
energies drooped too much for such an effort. Lady 
Carbery was, to me, individually, the one sole friend 



72 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

that ever I could regard as entirely fulfilling the offices 
of an honorable friendship. She had known me from 
infancy : when I was in my first year of life, she, 
an orphan and a great heiress, was in her tenth or 
eleventh ; and on her occasional visits to " the Farm," 
(a rustic old house then occupied by my father,) I, a 
household pet, suffering under an ague, which lasted 
from my first year to my third, naturally fell into hei 
hands as a sort of superior toy, a toy that could breathe 
and talk. Every year our intimacy had been renew- 
ed, until her marriage interrupted it. But, after no 
very long interval, when my mother had transferred 
her household to Bath, in that city we frequently met 
again ; Lord Carbery liking Bath for itself, as well as 
for its easy connection with London, whilst Lady Car- 
bery 's health was supposed to benefit by the waters. 
Her understanding was justly reputed a fine one ; but, 
in general, it was calculated to win respect rather than 
love, for it was masculine and austere, with very little 
toleration for sentiment or romance. But to myself 
she had always been indulgently kind ; I was protected 
in her regard, beyond any body's power to dislodge 
me, by her childish remembrances ; and of late years 
she had begun to entertain the highest opinion of my 
intellectual promises. Whatever could be done to as- 
sist my views, I most certainly might count upon her 
doing ; that is to say, within the limits of her conscien- 
tious judgment upon the propriety of my own plans. 
Having, besides, so much more knowledge of the world 
than myself, she might see cause to dissent widely from 
my view of what was expedient as well as what was 
right; in which case I was well assured that, in the 



PREMATURE MANHOOD. 73 

midst of kindness and unaffected sympathy, she would 
firmly adhere to the views of my guardians. In any 
circumstances she would have done so. But at present 
a new element had begun to mix with the ordinary in- 
fluences which governed her estimates of things : she 
had, as I knew from my sister's report, become reli- 
gious ; and her new opinions were of a gloomy cast, 
Calvinistic, in fact, and tending to what is now techni- 
cally known in England as " Low Church," or " Evan- 
gelical Christianity." These views, being adopted in 
a great measure from my mother, were naturally the 
same as my mother's ; so that I could form some guess 
as to the general spirit, if not the exact direction, in 
which her counsels would flow. It is singular that, 
until this time, I had never regarded Lady Carbery 
under any relation whatever to female intellectual so- 
ciety. My early childish knowledge of her had shut 
out that mode of viewing her. But now, suddenly, 
under the newborn sympathies awakened by the scene 

with Miss Bl , I became aware of the distinguished 

place she was qualified to fill in such society. In that 
Eden — for such it had now consciously become to 
me — I had no necessity to cultivate an interest or so- 
licit an admission ; already, through Lady Carbery's 
too flattering estimate of my own pretensions, and 
through old, childish memories, I held the most distin- 
guished place. This Eden, she it was that lighted up 
suddenly to my new-born powers of appreciation in all 
its dreadful points of contrast with the killing society 
of schoolboys. She it was, fitted to be the glory of 
such an Eden, who probably would assist in banishing 
me for the present to the wilderness outside. My dis- 
4 



74 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

tress of mind was inexpressible. And, in the midst of 

glittering saloons, at times also in the midst of society 
the most fascinating, I — contemplating the idea of that 
gloomy academic dungeon to which for three long years 
I anticipated too certainly a sentence of exile — felt 
very much as in the middle ages must have felt some 
victim of evil destiny, inheritor of a false, fleeting pros- 
perity, that suddenly, in a moment of time, by signs 
blazing out past all concealment on his forehead, was 
detected as a leper ; and in that character, as a public 
nuisance and universal horror, was summoned instantly 
to withdraw from society ; prince or peasant, was in- 
dulged with no time for preparation or evasion ; and, 
from the midst of any society, the sweetest or the most 
dazzling, was driven violently to take up his abode 
amidst the sorrow-haunted chambers of a lazar house. 
******** 

To teach is to learn : according to an old experi- 
ence, it is the very best mode of learning — the surest, 
and the shortest. And hence, perhaps, it may be, that 
in the middle ages by the monkish word scholaris was 
meant indifferently he that learned and he that taught. 
Never in any equal number of months did my under- 
standing so much expand as during this visit to Laxton. 
The incessant demand made upon me by Lady Carbery 
for solutions of the many difficulties besetting the study 
of divinity and the Greek Testament, or for such ap- 
proximations to solutions as my resources would fur- 
nish, forced me into a preternatural tension of all the 
faculties applicable to that purpose. Lady Carbery 
insisted upon calling me her " Admirable Crichton ;" 
and it was in vain that I demurred to this honorary 



PREMATURE MANHOOD. 76 

title upon two grounds : first, as being one towards 
wliich I had no natural aptitudes or predisposing ad- 
vantages ; secondly (which made her stare), as carry- 
ing with it no real or enviable distinction. The splen- 
dor supposed to be connected with the attainments of 
Crichton I protested against, as altogether imaginary. 
How far that person really had the accomplishments 
ascriljed to him, I waived as a question not worth in- 
vestigating. My objection commenced at an earlier 
point : real or not real, the accomplishments were, as 
I insisted, vulgar and trivial. Yulgar, that is, when 
put forward as exponents or adequate expressions of 
intellectual grandeur. The whole rested on a miscon- 
ception ; the limitary idea of knowledge was con- 
founded with the infinite idea of power. To have a 
quickness in copying or mimicking other men, and in 
learning to do dexterously what they did clumsily, — 
ostentatiously to keep glittering before men's eyes a 
thaumaturgic versatility such as that of a ropedancer, 
or of an Indian juggler, in petty accomplishments, — 
was a mode of the very vulgarest ambition : one effort 
of productive power, — a little book, for instance, 
which should impress or should agitate several succes- 
sive generations of men, even though far below the 
higlier efforts of human creative art — as, for example, 
the " De Imitatione Christi," or '' The Pilgrim's Pro- 
gress," or " Robinson Crusoe," or '' The Yicar of 
"Wakefield," — was worth any conceivable amount of 
attainments when rated as an evidence of anything 
that could justly denominate a man " admirable." One 
felicitous ballad of forty lines might have enthroned 
Crichton as really admirable, whilst the pretensions 



76 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

actually put forward on his behalf simply install him as 
a clever ish or dexterous ape. However, as Lady Car- 
bery did not forego her purpose of causing me to 
shine under every angle, it would have been ungrateful 
in me to refuse my co-operation with her plans, how- 
ever little they might wear a face of promise. Ac- 
cordingly I surrendered myself for two hours daily to 
the lessons in horsemanship of a principal groom who 
ranked as a first-rate rough-rider ; and I gathered man- 
ifold experiences amongst the horses — so different 
from the wild, hard-mouthed horses at Westport, that 
were often vicious, and sometimes trained to vice. 
Here, though spirited, the horses were pretty generally 
gentle, and all had been regularly broke. My educa- 
tion was not entirely neglected even as regarded sports- 
manship ; that great branch of philosophy being con- 
fided to one of the keepers, who was very attentive to 
me, in deference to the interest in myself expressed by 
his idolized mistress, but otherwise regarded me proba- 
bly as an ol)ject of mysterious curiosity rather than of 
sublunary hope. 

Equally, in fact, as regarded my physics and my met- 
aphysics, — in short, upon all lines of advance that in- 
terested my ambition, — I was going rapidly ahead. 
And, speaking seriously, in what regarded my intellec- 
tual expansion, never before or since had I been so dis- 
tinctly made aware of it. No longer did it seem to 
move upon the hour hand, whose advance, though cer- 
tain, is yet a pure matter of inference, but upon the 
seconds' hand, which visibly comes on at a trotting pace. 
Every thing prospered, except my own present happi- 
ness, and the possibility of any happiness for some 



PREMATUBE MANHOOD. 77 

years to come. About two months after leaving Lax- 
ton, my fate in the worst shape I had anticipated was 
solemnly and definitely settled. My guardians agreed 
that the most prudent course, with a view to my pecu- 
niary interests, was to place me at the Manchester 
Grammar School ; not with a view to further im- 
provement in my classical knowledge, though the head 
master was a sound scholar, but simply with a view to 
one of the school exhibitions.* Amongst the countless 
establishments, scattered all over England by the noble 
munificence of English men and English women in past 
generations, for connecting the provincial towns with 
the two royal universities of the land, this Manchester 
school was one ; in addition to other great local ad- 
vantages (namely, inter alia, a fine old library and an 
ecclesiastical foundation, which in this present genera- 
tion has furnished the materials for a bishopric of Man- 



*** Exhibitions.'^ — This is the technical name in many cases, corre- 
sponding to the bursa or bursaries of the continent; from which word 
bursce is derived, I believe the German term Bursch, — that is, a bur- 
Barius, or student, who lives at college upon the salary allowed by such 
a bursary. Some years ago the editor of a Glasgow daily paper called 
upon Oxford and Cambridge, with a patronising flourish, to imitate some 
one or more of the Scottish universities in founding such systems of ali- 
ment for poor students otherwise excluded from academic advantages. 
Evidently he was unaware that they had existed for centuries before the 
state of civilization in Scotland had allowed any opening for the founda- 
tion of colleges or academic life. Scottish bursaries, or exhibitions (a 
term which Shakespeare uses, very near the close of the first act in the 
' Two Gentlemen of Verona," as the technical expression in England), 
were few , and not generally, I believe, exceeding ten pounds a-year. The 
English were many, and of more ancient standing and running from 
forty pounds to one hundred pounds a-year. Such was the simple differ- 
ence between the two countries : otherwise they agreed altogether. 



78 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

Chester, with its deanery and chapter), this noblo 
foundation secured a number of exhibitions at Brase- 
nose College, Oxford, to those pupils of the school who 
should study at Manchester for three consecutive years. 
The pecuniary amount of these exhibitions has since 
then increased considerably through the accumulation 
of funds, which the commercial character of that great 
city caused to be neglected. At that time, I believe 
each exhibition yielded about forty guineas a year, and 
was legally tenable for seven successive years. Now, 
to me this would have offered a most seasonable ad- 
vantage, had it been resorted to some two years earlier. 
My small patrimonial inheritance gave to me, as it did 
to my four brothers, exactly one hundred and fifty 
pounds a year : and to each of my sisters exactly one 
hundred pounds a year. The Manchester exhibition of 
forty guineas a year would have raised this income for 
seven years to a sum close upon two hundred pounds a 
year. But at present I was halfway on the road to 
the completion of my sixteenth year. Commencing my 
period of pupilage from that time, I should not have 
finished it until I had travelled half-way through my nine- 
teenth year. And the specific evil that already weighed 
upon me with a sickening oppression was the premature 
expansion of my mind ; and, as a foremost consequence, 
intolerance of boyish society. I ought to have entered 
upon my triennium of school-boy servitude at the age 
of thirteen. As things were, — a delay with which I 
had nothing to do myself, — this and the native charac- 
ter of my mind had thrown the whole arrangement 
awry. For the better half of the three years I endur- 
ed it patiently. But it had at length begun to eat more 



PREMATURE MANHOOD. 79 

coiTOsivelj into my peace of mind than ever I had an- 
ticipated. The head master was substantially superanu- 
ated for the duties of this place. Not that intellectually 
he showed any symptoms of decay : but in the spirits 
and physical energies requisite for his duties he did: 
not so much age, as disease, it was that incapacitated 
him. In the course of a long day, beginning at seven 
A. M. and stretching down to five P. M., he succeeded 
in reaching the further end of his duties. But how ? 
Simply by consolidating pretty nearly into one continu- 
ous scene of labor the entire ten hours. The full hour 
of relaxation which the traditions of this ancient school 
and the by-laws had consecrated to breakfast was narrow- 
ed into ten, or even seven minutes. The two hours' in- 
terval, in like manner prescribed by the old usages from 
twelve to two p. m., was pared down to forty minutes, or 
less. In this way he walked conscientiously through the 
services of the day, fulfilling to the letter every section 
the minutest of the traditional rubric. But he purchas- 
ed this consummation at the price of all comfort to him- 
self: and having done that, he felt himself the more 
entitled to neglect the comfort of others. 

Precisely at the worst crisis of this intolerable dark- 
ness (for such, without exaggeration, it was in its efi*ects 
upon my spirits) arose, and for five or six months stead- 
ily continued, a consolation of that nature which hardly 
m dreams I could have anticipated. For even in 
dreams would it have seemed reasonable, or natural, 
that Lax ton, with its entire society, should transfer 
itself to Manchester ? Some mighty caliph, or lamp- 
bearing Aladdin, might have worked such marvels : but 
else who, or by what machinery? Nevertheless, with- 



80 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

out either caliph or Aladdin, and by the most natural of 
mere human agencies, this change was suddenly accom- 
plished. 

Lady Carbery at this period made an effort to teach 
me Hebrew, by way of repaying in kind my pains in 
teaching Grreek to her. Where, and upon what motive, 
she had herself begun to learn Hebrew, I forget : but 
in Manchester she had resumed this study with energy 
on a casual impulse derived from a certain Dr. Bailey, 
a clergyman of this city, who had published a Hebrew 
Grammar. The Hebrew studies, however, notwith- 
standing the personal assistance which we drew from 
the kindness of Dr. Bailey, languished. One day, in a 
pause of languor amongst these arid Hebrew studies, 
I read to her, with a beating heart, " The Ancient 
Mariner." It had been first published in 1798 ; and, 
about this time (1801), was re-published in the first 
^t^;o-volume edition of " The Lyrical Ballads." Well 
I knew Lady Carbery's constitutional inaptitude for 
poetry ; and not for the world would I have sought 
sympathy from her or from anybody else upon that 
part of the L. B. which belonged to Wordsworth. But 
I fancied that the wildness of this tale, and the triple 
majesties of Solitude, of Mist, and of the Ancient Un- 
known Sea, might have won her into relenting ; and, 
in fact, she listened with gravity and deep attention. 
But, on reviewing afterwards in conversation such pas- 
sages as she happened to remember, she laughed at the 
finest parts, and shocked me by calling the mariner 
himself " an old quiz ;" protesting that the latter part 
of his homily to the wedding guest clearly pointed him 
out as the very man meant by Providence for a sti- 



PREMATURE MANHOOD. 81 

pcndiary curate to the good Dr. Bailey in his over- 
crowded church.* With an albatross perched on his 
shoulder, and who might be introduced to the congre- 
gation as the immediate organ of his conversion, and 
supported by the droning of a bassoon, she represented 
the mariner lecturing to advantage in English; the 
doctor overhead in the pulpit enforcing it in Hebrew. 
Angry I was, though forced to laugh. But of what 
use is anger or argument in a duel with female criti- 
cism ? Our ponderous masculine wits are no match for 
the mercurial fancy of women. Once, however, I had 
a triumph : to my great surprise, one day, she sud- 
denly repeated by heart, to Dr. Bailey, the beautiful 
passage — 

" It ceased, yet still the sails made on," &c. — 

asking what he thought of thai ? As it happened, the 
simple, childlike doctor had more sensibility than her- 
self; for, though he had never in his whole homely life 
read more of poetry than he had drunk of Tokay or 
Constantia, — in fact, had scarcely heard tell of any 
poetry but Watts' Hymns, — he seemed petrified : and 
at last, with a deep sigh, as if recovering from the 
spasms of a new birth, said, " I never heard anything 
so beautiful in my whole life." 

During the long stay of the Laxton party in Man- 
chester, occurred a Christmas ; and at Christmas — that 
is, at the approach of this great Christian festival, so 
properly substituted in England for the Pagan festival 
of January and the New Year — there was, according 
to ancient usage, on the breaking up for the holidays, 

♦St. James', according to my present recollection. 



82 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

at the Grammar School, a solemn celebration of the 
season by public speeches. Among the six speakers, I, 
of course (as one of the three boys who composed the 
head class), lield a distinguished place; and it fol- 
lowed, also, as a matter of course, that all my friends 
congregated on this occasion to do me honor. What I 
had to recite was a copy of Latin verses (Alcaics) on 
the recent conquest of Malta. Melite Britannis Su- 
bacta — this was the title of my worshipful nonsense. 
The whole strength of the Laxton party had mustered 
on this occasion. Lady Carbery made a point of bring- 
ing in her party every creature whom she could influ- 
ence. And, probably, there were in that crowded au- 
dience many old Manchester friends of my father, lov- 
ing his memory, and thinking to honor it by kindness 
to his son. Furious, at any rate, was the applause 
which greeted me : furious was my own disgust. Fran- 
tic were the clamors as I concluded my nonsense. 
Frantic was my inner sense of shame at the childish 
exhibition to which unavoidably, I was making myself 
a party. Lady Carbery had, at first, directed towards 
rae occasional glances, expressing a comic sympathy 
. with tlie thouglits which she supposed to be occupying 
my mind. But these glances ceased ; and I was re- 
called by the gloomy sadness in her altered counte- 
nance to some sense of my own extravagant and dis- 
proportior.ate frenzy on this occasion : from the indul- 
gent kindness with which she honored me, her counte- 
nance on this occasion became a mirror to my own. 
At night she assured me, when talking over the case, 
that she had never witnessed an expression of such 
settled misery, and also (so she fancied) of misanthro 



PBEMATURE MANHOOD. 83 

py, as tliat wliicli darkened my countenance in those 
moments of apparent public triumph, no matter how 
trivial the occasion, and amidst an uproar of friendly 
felicitation. I look back to that state of mind as al- 
most a criminal reproach to myself, if it were not for 
the facts of the case. But, in excuse for myself, this 
fact, above all others, ought to be mentioned' — that, 
over and above the killing oppression to my too sensi- 
tive system of the monotonous school tasks, and the 
ruinous want of exercise, I had fallen under medical 
advice the most misleading that it is possible to imag- 
ine. The physician and the surgeon of my family were 
men too eminent, it seemed to me, and, consequently, 
with time too notoriously bearing a high pecuniary val- 
ue, for any school-boy to detain them with complaints. 
Under these circumstances, I tlirew myself for aid, in a 
case so simple that any clever boy in a druggist's shop 
would have known -how to treat it, upon the advice of 
an old, old apothecary, who had full authority from my 
guardians to run up a most furious account against me 
for medicine. This being the regular mode of pay- 
ment, inevitably, and unconsciously, he was biased to a 
mode of treatment ; namely, by drastic medicines va- 
ried without end, which fearfully exasperated the com- 
plaint. This complaint, as 1 now know, was the simp- 
lest possible derangement of the liver, a torpor in its 
action that might have been put to rights in three days. 
In fact, one week's pedestrian travelling amongst the 
Caernarvonshire mountains effected a revolution in my 
health such as left me nothing to complain of. 

Some months after this, the Laxton party quitted 
Manchester, having no further motive for staying. La- 



84 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

dy Carbery retired like some golden pageant amongst 
the clouds ; thick darkness succeeded ; the ancient tor- 
por reestablished itself ; and my health grew distress- 
ingly worse. Then it was, after dreadful self-conflicts, 
that I took the unhappy resolution of which the results 
are recorded in the " Opium Confessions." It is a 
bad thing for a boy to be, and know himself, far be- 
yond his tutors, whether in knowledge or in power of 
mind. This was the case, so far as regarded knowl- 
edge at least, not with myself only ; for the two boys 
who jointly with myself composed the first form were 
better Grecians than the head-master, though not more 
elegant scholars, nor at all more accustomed to sacri- 
fice to the graces. When I first entered, I remember 
that we read Sophocles ; and it was a constant matter 
of triumph to us, the learned triumvirate of the first 
form, to see our " Archididascalus" (as he loved to be 
called) conning our lesson before we went up, and lay- 
ing a regular train, with lexicon and grammar, for 
blowing up and blasting (as it were) any difficulties he 
found in the choruses ; whilst we never condescended 
to open our books, until the moment of going up, and 
were generally employed in writing epigrams upon his 
wig, or some such important matter. My two class- 
fellows were poor, and dependent, for their future pros- 
pects at the university, on the recommendation of the 
head-master ; but I, who had a small patrimonial prop- 
erty, the income of which was sufficient to support me 
at college, wished to be sent thither immediately. 1 
made earnest representations on the subject to my guar- 
dians, but all to no purpose. One, who was more rea- 
sonable, and had more knowledge of the world than 



PRKMATURE MANHOOD. 85 

the rest, lived at a distance ; two of the other three 
resigned all their authority into the hands of the fourth ; 
and this fourth, with whom I had to negotiate, was a 
worthy man, in his way, but haughty, obstinate, and 
intolerant of all opposition to his will. After a certain 
number of letters and personal interviews, I found that 
I had nothing to hope for, not even a compromise of 
the matter, from my guardian : unconditional submis- 
sion was what he demanded ; and I prepared myself, 
therefore, for other measures. Summer was now com- 
ing on with hasty steps, and my seventeenth birth-day 
was fast approaching ; after which day I had sworn 
within myself that I would no longer be numbered 
amongst school-boys. 

******* * 

It is a just remark of Dr. Johnson's (and, what can- 
not often be said of his remarks, it is a very feeling 
one) that we never do anything consciously for the 
last time (of things, that is, which we have long been 
in the habit of doing), without sadness of heart. This 

truth I felt deeply when I came to leave , a place 

which I did not love, and where I had not been happy. 

On the evening before I left forever, I grieved 

when the ancient and lofty school-room resounded with 
the evening service, performed for the last time in my 
hearing ; and at night, when the muster-roll of names 
was called over, and mine (as usual) was called first, 
I stepped forward, and passing the head-master, who 
was standing by, I bowed to him, and looking earnestly 
in his face, thinking to myself, " He is old and infirm, 
and in this world I shall not see him again." I was 
right ; I never did see him again, nor never shall. He 



86 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

looked at me complacently, smiled good-naturedlj, re- 
turned my salutation (or rather my valediction), and 
we parted (tliougli lie knew it not) forever. I could 
not reverence liim intellectually ; but he had been uni- 
formly kind to me, and had allowed me many indul- 
gences ; and I grieved at the thought of the mortifica- 
tion I should inflict upon him. 

The morning came, which was to launch me into the 
world, and from which my whole succeeding life has, in 
many important points, taken its coloring. I lodged 
in the head-master's house, and had been allowed, from 
my first entrance, the indulgence of a private room, 
which I used both as a sleeping room and as a study. 
At half after three I rose, and gazed with deep emotion 

at the ancient towers of , " drest in earliest light," 

and beginning to crimson with the radiant lustre of a 
cloudless July morning. I was firm and immovable in 
my purpose, but yet agitated by anticipation of uncer- 
tain danger and troubles ; and if I could have foreseen 
the hurricane, and perfect hail-storm of affliction, which 
soon fell upon me, well might I have been agitated. 
To this agitation the deep peace of the morning pre- 
sented an affecting contrast, and in some degree a med- 
icine. The silence was more profound than that of 
midnight : and to me the silence of a summer morning 
is more touching than all other silence, because, the 
light being broad and strong, as that of noon-day at 
other seasons of the year, it seems to differ from per- 
fect day chiefly because man is not yet abroad ; and 
thus, the peace of nature, and of the innocent creatures 
of God, seems to be secure and deep, only so long as 
the presence of man, and his restless and unquiet spirit, 



PREMATURE MANHOOD. 87 

are not tliere to trouble its sanctity. I dressed myself, 
took my hat and gloves, and lingered a little in the 
room. For the last year and a half this room had been 
my "pensive citadel :" here I had read and studied 
through all the hours of night ; and, though true it 
was, that, for the latter part of this time, I, who was 
framed for love and gentle affections, had lost my gay- 
ety and happiness, during the strife and fever of con- 
tention with my guardian, yet, on the other hand, as a 
boy so passionately fond of books, and dedicated to 
intellectual pursuits, I could not fail to have enjoyed 
many happy hours in the midst of general dejection. 
I wept as I looked round on the chair, hearth, writing- 
table, and other familiar objects, knowing too certainly 
that I looked upon them for the last time. Whilst I 
write this, it is eighteen years ago ; and yet, at this 
moment, I see distinctly, as if it were but yesterday, 
the lineaments and expressions of the object on which 
T fixed my parting gaze : it was a picture of the love- 
ly , which hung over the maiLtel-piece ; the eyes 

and mouth of which were so beautiful, and the whole 
countenance so radiant with benignity and divine tran- 
quillity, that I had a thousand times laid down my 
pen, or my book, to gather consolation from it, as a 
devotee from his patron saint. Whilst I was yet gaz- 
ing upon it, the deep tones of clock proclaimed 

that it was four o'clock. I went up to the picture, 
kissed it, and then gently walked out, and closed the 
door forever ! 

* *.* * * * ** 

Some anxiety I had, on leaving Manchester, lest my 
mother should suffer too much from this rash step ; and 



88 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

on that impulse I altered the direction of my wander- 
ings ; not going (as I had originally planned) to the 
English Lakes, but making first of all for St. John's 
Priory, Chester, at that time my mother's residence. 
There I found my maternal uncle, Captain Penson, of 
the Bengal establishment, just recently come home on 
a two years' leave of absence ; and there I had an in- 
terview with my mother. By a temporary arrange- 
ment I received a weekly allowance, which would have 
enabled me to live in any district of Wales, either 
North or South ; for Wales, both North and South, is 
(or at any rate was) a land of exemplary cheapness. 
For instance, at Talyllyn, in Merionethshire, or any- 
where off the line of tourists. I and a lieutenant in 
our English navy paid sixpence uniformly for a hand- 
some dinner; sixpence, I mean, apiece. But two 
months later came a golden blockhead, who instructed 
the people that it was " sinful" to charge less than 
three shillings. In Wales, meantime, I suffered griev- 
ously from want of books ; and fancying, in my pro- 
found ignorance of the world, that I could borrow 
money upon ray own expectations, or at least, that I 
could do so with the joint security of Lord Westport 
(now Earl of Altamont, upon his father's elevation to 
the Marquisate of Sligo), or (failing thaV) with the se- 
curity of his amiable and friendly cousin, the Earl of 
Desart, I had the unpardonable folly to quit the deep 
tranquillities of North Wales for the uproars, and per- 
ils, and the certain miseries, of London. I had bor- 
rowed ten guineas from Lady Carbery ; and at that 
time, when my purpose was known to nobody, I might 
have borrowed any sum I pleased. But I could never 



PREMATURE MANHOOD. 89 

again avail myself of that resource, because I must have 
given some address, in order to insure the receipt of 
Lady Carbery's answer ; and in that case, so sternly 
conscientious was she, that, under the notion of saving 
me from ruin, my address would have been immedi- 
ately communicated to my guardians, and by them 
would have been confided to the unrivalled detective 
talents, in those days, of Townsend, or some other 
Bow-street ofi&cer. 



IX. 

THE RUNAWAY. 

Soon after this, I contrived, by means which I must 
omit for want of room, to transfer myself to London. 
And now began the latter and fiercer stage of my long 
sufferings; without using a disproportionate expression, 
I might say, of my agony. For I now suffered, for 
upwards of sixteen weeks, the physical anguish of 
hunger in various degrees of intensity ; but as bitter, 
perhaps, as ever any human being can have suffered 
who has survived it. I would not needlessly harass my 
reader's feelings by a detail of all that I endured ; for 
extremities such as these, under any circumstances of 
heaviest misconduct or guilt, cannot be contemplated, 
even in description, without a rueful pity that is painful 
to the natural goodness of the human heart. Let it 
suffice, at least on this occasion, to say, that a few frag- 
ments of bread from the breakfast-table of one individ- 
ual (who supposed me to be ill, but did not know of 
my being in utter want), and these at uncertain inter- 
vals, constituted my whole support. During tlie former 
part of my sufferings (that is, generally in Wales, and 
always for the first two months in London), 1 was 
houseless, and very seldom slept under a roof. To this 
constant exposure to the open air I ascribe it, mainly, 
that 1 did not sink under my torments. Latterly, how- 
ever, when cold and more inclement weather came on, 

(90) 



THE RUNAWAY. 91 

and when, from the length of my sufiferings, I had be- 
gun to sink into a more languishing condition, it was, 
no doubt, fortunate for me, that the same person to 
whose breakfast-table I had access, allowed me to sleep 
in a large unoccupied house, of which he was tenant. 
Unoccupied, I call it, for there was no household or 
establishment in it ; nor any furniture, indeed, except 
a table and a few chairs. But I found, on taking pos- 
session of my new quarters, that the house already con- 
tained one single inmate, a poor, friendless child, ap- 
parently ten years old ; but she seemed hunger-bitten ; 
and sufferings of that sort often make children look 
older than they are. From this forlorn child I learned, 
that she had slept and lived there alone, for some time 
before I came ; and great joy the poor creature express- 
ed, when she found that 1 was in future to be her com- 
panion through the hours of darkness. The house was 
large ; and, from the want of furniture, the noise of the 
rats made a prodigious echoing on the spacious stair- 
case and hall ; and, amidst the real fleshly ills of cold, 
and, I fear, hunger, the forsaken child had found leisure 
to suffer still more (it appeared) from the self-created 
one of ghosts. I promised her protection against all 
ghosts whatsoever ; but alas ! I could offer her no other 
assistance. We lay upon the floor, with a bundle of 
cursed law papers for a pillow, but with no other cover- 
ing than a sort of large horseman's cloak ; afterwards, 
however, we discovered, in a garret, an old sofa-cover, 
a small piece of rug, and some fragments of other arti- 
cles, which added a little to our warmth. The poor 
child crept close to me for warmth, and for security 
against her ghostly enemies. When I was not more 



92 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

than usually ill, I took her in my arms, so that, in gen- 
eral, she was tolerably warm, and often slept when I 
could not ; for, during the last two months of my suf- 
ferings, I slept much in the daytime, and was apt to fall 
into transient dozings at all hours. But my sleep dis- 
tressed me more than my watching ; for, besides the 
tumultuousness of my dreams (which were only not so 
awful as those which I shall have to describe hereafter 
as produced by opium), my sleep was never moie than 
what is called dog sleep; so that I could hear myself 
moaning, and was often, as it seemed to me, awakened 
suddenly by my own voice ; and, about this time, a hid- 
eous sensation began to haunt me as soon as I fell into a 
slumber, which has since returned upon me, at diiferent 
periods of my life, namely, a sort of twitching (I know 
not where, but apparently about the region of the 
stomach), which compelled me violently to throw out 
my feet for the sake of relieving it. This sensation 
coming on as soon as I began to sleep, and the effort to 
relieve it constantly awakening me, at length I slept 
only from exhaustion ; and, from increasing weakness 
(as I said before), I was constantly falling asleep, and 
constantly awaking. Meantime the master of the house 
sometimes came in upon us suddenly, and very early ; 
sometimes not till ten o'clock ; sometimes not at all. 
He was in constant fear of baliffs ; improving on the 
plan of Cromwell, every night he slept in a different 
quarter of London ; and I observed that he never failed 
to examine, through a private window, the appearance 
of those who knocked at the door, before he would 
allow it to be opened. He breakfasted alone ; indeed, 
his tea equipage would hardly have admitted of his 



THE RUNAWAY. 93 

hazarding an invitation to a second person, any more 
than the quantity of esculent material^ which for the 
most part, was little more than a roll, or a few biscuits, 
which he had bought on his road from the place where 
he had slept. During his breakfast, I generally con- 
trived a reason for lounging in ; and, with an air of 
as much indifference as I could assume, took up such 
fragments as he had left, — sometimes, indeed, there 
were none at all. In doing this, I committed no rob- 
bery, except upon the man himself, who was thus obliged 
(I believe), now and then, to send out at noon for an 
extra biscuit ; for, as to the poor child, she was never 
admitted into his study (if I may give that name to his 
chief depository of parchments, law writings, &c.) ; 
that room was to her the Blue-beard room of the house, 
being regularly locked on his departure to dinner, about 
six o'clock, which usually was his final departure for 
the night. Whether this child was an illegitimate 
daughter of Mr. , or only a servant, I could not as- 
certain ; she did not herself know ; but certainly she was 
treated altogether as a menial servant. No sooner did 

Mr. make his appearance, than she went below 

stairs, brushed his shoes, coat, &c. ; and, except when 
she was summoned to run an errand, she never emerged 
from the dismal Tartarus of the kitchens, to the upper 
air, until my welcome knock at night called up her little 
trembling footsteps to the front door. Of her life 
during the daytime, however, I knew little but what 1 
gathered from her own account at night ; for, as soon as 
the hours of business commenced, I saw that my absence 
would be acceptable ; and in general, therefore, I went 
off and sate in the parks, or elsewhere, until night-fall. 



94 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

The house I have already described as a large one. 
It stands in a conspicuous situation, and in a well- 
known part of London. Many of my readers will have 
passed it, I doubt not within a few hours of reading 
this. For myself, I never fail to visit it when business 
draws me to London. About ten o'clock this very 
night, August 15, 1821, being my birth-day, I turned 
aside from my evening walk, down Oxford-street, pur- 
posely to take a glance at it. It is now occupied by a 
respectable family, and, by the lights in the front draw- 
ing-room, I observed a domestic party, assembled, per- 
haps, at tea, and apparently cheerful and gay ; — mar- 
vellous contrast, in my eyes, to the darkness, cold, si- 
lence, and desolation, of that same house eighteen 
years ago, when its nightly occupants were one fam- 
ishing scholar and a neglected child. Her, by the by, 
in after years, I vainly endeavored to trace. Apart 
from her situation, she was not what would be called 
an interesting child. She was neither pretty, nor 
quick in understanding, nor remarkably pleasing in 
manners. But, thank God ! even in those years I 
needed not the emxbellishments of novel accessories to 
conciliate my affections. Plain human nature, in its 
humblest and most homely apparel, was enough for 
me ; and I loved the child because she was my part- 
ner in wretchedness. If she is now living, she is prob- 
ably a mother, with children of her own ; but, as 1 
have said, I could never trace her. 

This I regret ; but another person there was, at that 
time, whom I have since sought to trace, with far deep- 
er earnestness, and with far deeper sorrow at my fail- 
ure. This person was a young woman, and one of that 



THE BUNAWAY. 95 

unhappy class who subsist upon the wages of prostitu- 
tion. I feel no shame, nor have any reason to feel it, 
in avowing, that I was then on familiar and friendly 
terms with many women in that unfortunate condition. 
The reader needs neither smile at this avowal, nor 
frown ; for, not to remind my classical readers of the 
old Latin proverb, " Sine Cerere,'' &c., it may well 
be supposed that in the existing state of my purse my 
connection with such women could not have been an . 
impure one. But one amongst them, — yet no ! let me 

not class thee, oh noble-minded Ann ,with that 

order of women ; — let me find, if it be possible, some 
gentler name to designate the condition of her to whose 
bounty and compassion — ministering to my necessities 
when all the world had forsaken me — I owe it that I 
am at this time alive. For many weeks, I had walked, 
at nights, with this poor friendless girl, up and down 
Oxford-street, or had rested with her on steps and un- 
der the shelter of porticoes. She could not be so old 
as myself: she told me, indeed, that she had not com- 
pleted her sixteenth year. By such questions as my 
interest about her prompted, I had gradually drawn 
forth her simple history. Hers was a case of ordinary 
occurrence (as I have since had reason to think), and 
one in which, if London beneficence had better adapted 
its arrangements to meet it, the power of the law might 
oftener be interposed to protect and to avenge. But 
the stream of London charity flows in a channel which, 
though deep and miglity, is yet noiseless and under 
ground ; — not obvious or readily accessible to poor, 
houseless wanderers, and it cannot be denied that the 
outside air and framework of London society is harsh, 



96 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

cruel, and repulsive. In any case, however, I saw that 
part of her injuries might easily have been redressed ; 
and I urged her often and earnestly to lay her com- 
plaint before a magistrate. Friendless as she was, I 
assured her that she would meet with immediate atten- 
tion ; and that English justice, which was no respecter 
of persons, would speedily and amply avenge her on the 
brutal ruffian who had plundered her little property 
She promised me often that she would ; but she de- 
layed taking the steps I pointed out, from time to time ; 
or she was timid and dejected to a degree which show- 
ed how deeply sorrow had taken hold of her young 
heart ; and perhaps she thought justly that the most 
upright judge and the most righteous tribunals could 
do nothing to repair her heaviest wrongs. Something, 
however, would perhaps have been done ; for it had 
been settled between us, at length, — but, unhappily, 
on the very last time but one that 1 was ever to see 
her, — that in a day or two we should speak on her 
behalf. This little service it was destined, however, 
that I should never realize. Meantime, that which she 
rendered to me, and which was greater than I could 
ever have repaid her, was this : — One night, when we 
were pacing slowly along Oxford-street, and after a 
day when I had felt unusually ill and faint, I requested 
her to turn off with me into Soho-square. Thither we 
went ; and we sate down on the steps of a house, 
which, to this hour, I never pass without a pang of 
grief, and an inner act of homage to the spirit of that 
unhappy girl, in memory of the noble act which she 
there performed. Suddenly, as we sate, I grew much 
worse. I had been leaning my liead against her bosom, 



THE RUNAWAY. 97 

and all at once I sank from her arms and fell back- 
wards on the steps. From the sensations I then had, 
I felt an inner conviction of the liveliest kind, that 
without some powerful and reviving stimulus I should 
either have died on the spot, or should, at least, have 
sunk to a point of exhaustion from which all re-ascent, 
under my friendless circumstances, would soon have 
become hopeless. Then it was, at this crisis of my 
fate, that my poor orphan companion, who had herself 
met with little but injuries in this world, stretched 
out a saving hand to me. Uttering a cry of terror, 
but without a moment's delay, she ran off into Oxford- 
street, and in less time than could be imagined, return- 
ed to me with a glass of port wine and spices, that acted 
upon my empty stomach (which at that time would 
have rejected all solid food) with an instantaneous 
power of restoration ; and for this glass the generous 
girl, without a murmur, paid out of her own humble 
purse, at a time, be it remembered, when she had 
scarcely wherewithal to purchase the bare necessaries 
of life, and when she could have no reason to expect 
that I should ever be able to reimburse her. 0, youth- 
ful benefactress ! how often, in succeeding years, stand- 
ing in solitary places, and thinking of thee with grief 
of heart and perfect love, — how often have I wished 
that, as in ancient times the curse of a father was be- 
lieved to have a supernatural power, and to pursue its 
object with a fatal necessity of self-fulfillment, — even 
so the benediction of a heart oppressed with gratitude 
might have a like prerogative ; might have power given 
to it from above to chase, to haunt, to waylay, to over- 
take, to pursue thee into the central darkness of a Lon- 
5 



98 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

don brothel, or (if it were possible) into the darkness 
of the grave, there to awaken thee with an authentic 
message of peace and forgiveness, and of final reconcil- 
iation ! 

Soon after the period of the last incident I have re- 
corded, I met, in Albemarle-street, a gentleman of his 
late Majesty's household. This gentleman had received 
hospitalities, on different occasions, from my family ; 
and he challenged me upon the strength of my family 
likeness. I did not attempt any disguise ; I answered 
his questions ingenuously, and, on his pledging his word 
of honor that he would not betray me to my guardians, 
I gave him an address to my friend, the attorney. The 
next day I received from him a ten-pound bank note. 
The letter enclosing it was delivered, with other letters 
of business, to the attorney ; but, though his look and 
manner informed me that he suspected its contents, he 
gave it up to me honorably, and without demur. 

This present, from the particular service to which it 
was applied, leads me naturally to speak of the purpose 
which had allured me up to London, and which I had 
been (to use a forensic word) soliciting from the first 
day of my arrival in London, to that of my final de- 
parture. 

Li so mighty a world as London, it will surprise my 
readers that I should not have found some means of 
staving off the last extremities of penury ; and it will 
strike them that two resources, at least, must have been 
open to me, namely, either to seek assistance from the 
friends of my family, or to turn my youthful talents 
and attainments into some channel of pecuniary emolu- 
ment. As to the first course, I may observe, generally, 



THE RUNAWAY. 99 

that what I dreaded beyond all other evils was the 
chance of being reclaimed by my guardians ; not doubt- 
ing that whatever power the law gave them would have 
been enforced against me to the utmost ; that is, to the 
extremity of forcibly restoring me to the school which 
I had quitted ; a restoration which, as it would, in my 
eyes, have been a dishonor, even if submitted to volun- 
tarily, could not fail, when extorted from me in con- 
tempt and defiance of my own wishes and efforts, to 
have been a humiliation worse to me than death, and 
which would indeed have terminated in death. I was, 
therefore, shy enough of applying for assistance even in 
those quarters where I was sure of receiving it, at the 
risk of furnishing my guardians with any clue for re- 
covering me. But, as to London in particular, though 
doubtless my father had in his lifetime had many friends 
there, yet (as ten years had passed since his death) I 
remembered few of them even by name ; and never 
having seen London before, except once for a few 
hours, I knew not the address of even those few. To 
this mode of gaining help, therefore, in part the diffi« 
culty, but much more the paramount fear which I haA^e 
mentioned, habitually indisposed me. In regard to the 
other mode, I now feel half inclined to join my reader 
in wondering that I should have overlooked it. As a 
corrector of Greek proofs (if in no other way), I might, 
doubtless, have gained enough for my slender wants. 
Such an office as this I could have discharged with an 
exemplary and punctual accuracy that would soon have 
gained me the confidence of my employers. But it 
must not be forgotten that, even for such an office as 
this, it was necessary that I should first of all have an 



100 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

introduction to some respectable publisher ; and this 1 
had no means of obtaining. To say the truth, howev- 
er, it had never once occurred to me to think of litera- 
ry labors as a source of profit. No mode sufficiently 
speedy of obtaining money had ever occurred to me, 
but that of borrowing it on the strength of my future 
claims and expectations. This mode I sought by every 
avenue to compass ; and amongst other persons I ap- 
plied to a Jew named D . 

To this Jew, and to other advertising money-lenders 
(some of whom were, I believe, also Jews), I had in- 
troduced myself, with an account of my expectations ; 
which account, on examining my father's will at Doc- 
tor's Commons, they had ascertained to be correct. The 

person there mentioned as the second son of was 

found to have all the claims (or more than all) that I 
had stated : but one question still remained, which the 
faces of the Jews pretty significantly suggested, — was 
I that person ? This doubt had never occurred to me 
as a possible one ; I had rather feared, whenever my 
Jewish friends scrutinized me keenly, that I might be 
too well known to be that person, and that some scheme 
might be passing in their minds for entrapping me and 
selling me to my guardians. It was strange to me to 
find my own self, materialiter considered (so I express- 
ed it, for I doted on logical accuracy of distinctions,) 
accused, or at least suspected, of counterfeiting my own 
self, formaliler considered. However, to satisfy their 
scruples, I took the only course in my power. Whilst 
I was in Wales, 1 had received various letters from 
young friends : these I produced, — for I carried them 
constantly in my pocket, — being, indeed, by this time, 



THE RUNAWAY. 101 

almost the only relics of my personal incumbrances 
(excepting the clothes I wore), which 1 had not in one 
way or other disposed of. Most of these letters were 

from the Earl of , who was, at that time, my chief 

(or rather only) confidential friend. These letters 
were dated from Eton. I had also some from the Mar- 
quis of , his father, who, though absorbed in agri- 
cultural pursuits, yet having been an Etonian himself, 
and as good a scholar as a nobleman needs to be, still 
retained an affection for classical studies, and for youth- 
ful scholars. He had, accordingly, from the time that 
I was fifteen, corresponded with me ; sometimes upon 
the great improvements which he had made, or was 

meditating, in the counties of M and SI , since 

I had been there ; sometimes upon the merits of a Lat- 
in poet ; at other times, suggesting subjects to me on 
which he wished me to write verses. 

On reading the letters, one of my Jewish friends 
agreed to furnish two or three hundred pounds on my 
personal security, provided I could persuade the young 
earl, — who was, by the way, not older than myself, — 
to guarantee the payment on our coming of age : the 
Jew's final object being, as I now suppose, not the tri- 
fling profit he could expect to make by me, but the pros- 
pect of establishing a connection with my noble friend, 
whose immense expectations were well known to him. 
In pursuance of this proposal on the part of the Jew, 
about eight or nine days after I had received the ten 
pounds, 1 prepared to go down to Eton. Nearly three 
pounds of the money I had given to my money-lending 
friend, on his alleging that the stamps must be bought, 
in order that the writings might be prepared whilst I 



102 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

was away from London. I thought in my heart that he 
was lying ; but I did not wish to give him any excuse 
for charging his own delays upon me. A smaller sum I 
had given to my friend the attorney (who was connect- 
ed with the money-lenders as their lawyer), to which 
indeed, he was entitled for his unfurnished lodgings. 
About fifteen shillings I had employed in reestablishing 
(though in a very humble way) my dress. Of the re- 
mainder, I gave one quarter ta Ann, meaning, on my 
return, to have divided with her whatever might remain. 
These arrangements made, soon after six o'clock, on a 
dark winter evening, I set off, accompanied by Ann, 
towards Piccadilly : for it was my intention to go down 
as far as Salt Hill on the Bath or Bristol mail. Our 
course lay through a part of the town which has now 
all disappeared, so that I can no longer retrace its an- 
cient boundaries : Swallow street, I think it was called. 
Having time enough before us, however, we bore away 
to the left, until we came into Golden square : there, 
near the corner of Sherrard street, we sat down, not 
wishing to part in the tumult and blaze of Piccadilly. 
I had told her of my plans some time before ; and now 
I assured her again that she should share in my good 
fortune, if I met with any ; and that 1 would never for- 
sake her, as soon as I had power to protect her. This 
I fully intended, as much from inclination as from a 
sense of duty ; for setting aside gratitude, which, in 
any case, must have made me her debtor for life, I loved 
her as affectionately as if she had been my sister ; and 
at this moment with seven-fold tenderness, from pity at 
witnessing her extreme dejection. I had, apparently, 
most reason for dejection, because I was leaving tho 



THE RUNAWAY. 103 

savior of my life ; yet I, considering the shock my 
health had received, was cheerful and full of hope. 
She, on the contrary, who was parting with one who 
had had little means of serving her, except by kind- 
ness and brotherly treatment, was overcome by sorrow : 
so that, when I kissed her at our final farewell, she put 
her arms about my neck, and wept, without speaking a 
word. I hoped to return in a week at furthest, and I 
agreed with her that on the fifth night from that, and 
every night afterwards, she should wait for me, at six 
o'clock, near the bottom of Great Titchfield street, 
which had been our customary haven, as it were, of 
rendezvous, to prevent our missing each other in the 
great Mediterranean of Oxford street. This, and other 
measures of precaution, I took : one, only, I forgot. 
She had either never told me, or (as a matter of no 
great interest) I had forgotten, her surname. It is a 
general practice, indeed, with girls of humble rank in 
her unhappy condition, not (as novel reading women of 
higher pretensions) to style themselves 3Iiss Douglass^ 
Miss Montague^ Sfc.,' but simply by their christian 
names, Mary, Jane, Frances, &g. Her surname, as 
the surest means of tracing her, I ought now to have 
inquired ; but the truth is, having no reason to think 
that our meeting could, in consequence of a short inter- 
ruption, be more difficult or uncertain than it had been 
for so many weeks, I had scarcely for a moment advert- 
ed to it as necessary, or placed it amongst my memo- 
randa against this parting interview ; and my final anx- 
ieties being spent in comforting her with hopes, and in 
pressing upon her the necessity of getting some medi- 
cine for a violent cough and hoarseness with which 



104 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

she was troubled, I wholly forgot it until it was too late 
to recall her. 

It was past eight o'clock when I reaahed the Glouces- 
ter Coffee-House, and the Bristol Mail being on the 
point of going off, I mounted on the outside. The fine 
fluent motion* of this mail soon laid me asleep. It is 
somewhat remarkable that the first easy or refreshing 
sleep which I had enjoyed for some months was on the 
outside of a mail-coach, — a bed which, at this day, I 
find rather an uneasy one. Unfortunately, indeed, 1 
went rather further than I intended ; for so genial and 
refreshing was my sleep, that the next time, after leav- 
ing Hounslow, that I fully awoke, was upon the sudden 
pulling up of the mail (possibly at a post-ofiice), and, 
on inquiry, I found that we had reached ^laidenhead, 
six or seven miles, I think, ahead of Salt Hill. I im- 
mediately set forward, or, rather, backward, on foot. 
It must have been nearly midnight ; but so slowly did I 
creep along, that I heard a clock in a cottage strike 
four before I turned down the lane from Slough to Eton.- 

In the road between Slough and Eton I fell asleep ; 
and just as the morning began to dawn, I was awakened 
by the voice of a man standing over me and surveying 
me. I know not what he was. He was an ill-looking 
fellow, but not, therefore, of necessity, an ill-meaning 
fellow ; or if he were, I suppose he thought that no person 
sleeping out of doors in winter could be worth robbing. 
In which conclusion, however, as it regarded myself, I 
beg to assure him, if he should be among my readers, 

* The Bristol Mail is the best appointed in the kingdom, owing to the 
double advantage of an unusually good road, and of an extra sum for 
expenses subscribed by the Bristol merchants. 



THfi RUNAWAY. 105 

ho was mistaken. After a slight remark, he passed on. 
I was not sorry at his disturbance, as it enabled me to 
pass through Eton before people were generally up. 
The night had been heavy and lowering, but towards 
the morning it had changed to a slight frost, and the 
ground and the trees were now covered with rime. I 
slipped through Eton unobserved ; washed myself, and, 
as far as possible, adjusted my dress, at a little public 
house in Windsor ; and, about eight o'clock, went down 
towards Pote's. On my road I met some junior boys, 
of whom I made inquiries. An Etonian is always a 
gentleman, and, in spite of my shabby habiliments, they 

answered me civilly. My friend, Lord , was gone 

to the university of . " Ibi omnis elFusus labor ! " 

I had, however, other friends at Eton ; but it is not to 
all who wear that name in prosperity that a man is 
willing to present himself in distress. On recollecting 

myself, however, I asked for the Earl of D , to 

whom (though my acquaintance with him was not so 
intimate as with some others) I should not have shrunk 
from presenting myself under any circumstances. He 
was still at Eton, though, I believe, on the wing for 
Cambridge. 1 called, was received kindly, and asked 
to breakfast. 

Lord D placed before me a most magnificent 

breakfast. It was really so ; but in my eyes it seemed 
trebly magnificent, from being the first regular meal, 
the first " good man's table," that I had sat down to 
for months. Strange to say, however, I could scarcely 
eat anything. On the day when I first received my 
ten-pound bank-note, I had gone to a baker's shop and 
bought a couple of rolls; this very shop I had two 
5* 



106 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

months or six weeks before surveyed with an eagerness 
of desire which it was almost humiliating to me to re- 
collect. I remembered the story about Otway ; and 
feared that there might be danger in eating too rapidly. 
But I had no need for alarm ; my appetite was quite 
sunk, and I became sick before I had eaten half of 
what I had bought. This effect, from eating what ap- 
proached to a meal, I continued to feel for weeks ; or, 
when I did not experience any nausea, part of what I 
ate was rejected, sometimes with acidity, sometimes 
immediately and without any acidity. On the present 

occasion, at Lord D 's table, I found myself not 

at all better than usual ; and, in the midst of luxuries, 
I had no appetite. I had, however, unfortunately, at 
all times a craving for wine ; I explained my situation, 
therefore, to Lord D , and gave him a short ac- 
count of my late sufferings, at which he expressed great 
compassion, and called for wine. This gave me a mo- 
mentary relief and pleasure ; and on all occasions, 
when I had an opportunity, I never failed to drink 
wine, which I worshipped then as I have since worshipped 
opium. I am convinced, however, that this indulgence 
in wine continued to strengthen my malady, for the 
tone of my stomach was apparently quite sunk ; but, 
by a better regimen, it might sooner, and, perhaps, ef- 
fectually, have been revived. I hope that it was not 
from this love of wine that I lingered in the neighbor- 
hood of my Eton friends ; I persuaded myself then that 

it was from reluctance to ask of Lord D , on whom 

I was conscious I had not sufficient claims, the particu- 
lar service in quest of which I had come to Eton. 1 
was, however, unwilling to lose my journey, and, — I 



THE RUNAWAY. 107 

asked it. Lord D , whose good nature was un- 
bounded, and which, in regard to myself, had been 
measured rather by his compassion perhaps for my con- 
dition, and his knowledge of my intimacy with some of 
his relatives, than by an over-rigorous inquiry into the 
extent of my own direct claims, faltered, nevertheless, 
at this request. He acknowledged that he did not like 
to have any dealings with money-lenders, and feared 
lest such a transaction might come to the ears of his 
connections. Moreover, he doubted whether his sig- 
nature, whose expectations were so much more bound- 
ed than those of , would avail with my unchris- 
tian friends. However, he did not wish, as it seemed, 
to mortify me by an absolute refusal ; for, after a little 
consideration, he promised, under certain conditions, 

which he pointed out, to give his security. Lord D 

was at this time not eighteen years of age ; but I have 
often doubted, on recollecting, since, the good sense 
and prudence which on this occasion he mingled with 
so much urbanity of manner (an urbanity which in him 
wore the grace of youthful sincerity), whether any 
statesman — the oldest and the most accomplished in 
diplomacy — could have acquitted himself better under 
the same circumstances. Most people, indeed, cannot 
be addressed on such a business, without surveying you 
with looks as austere and unpropitious as those of a 
Saracen's head. 

Kecomforted by this promise, which was not quite 
equal to the best, but far above the worst, that I had 
pictured to myself as possible, I returned in a Windsor 
coach to London three days after I had quitted it. 
And now I come to the end of my story. The Jews 



108 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

did not approve of Lord D 's terms ; whether they 

would ill the end have acceded to them, and were only 
seeking time for making due inquiries, I know not ; 
but many delays were made, — time passed on, — the 
small fragment of my bank-note had just melted away, 
and before any conclusion could have been put to the 
business, I must have relapsed into my former state of 
wretchedness. Suddenly, however, at this crisis, an 
opening was made, almost by accident, for reconcilia- 
tion with my friends. I quitted London in haste, for a 
remote part of England ; after some time, I proceeded 
to the university ; and it was not until many months 
had passed away, that I had it in my power again to 
revisit the ground which had become so interesting to 
me, and to this day remains so, as the chief scene of 
my youthful sufferings. 

Meantime, what had become of poor Ann ? For her 
I have reserved my concluding words ; according to 
our agreement, I sought her daily, and waited for her 
every night, so long as I stayed in London, at the cor- 
ner of Titchfield-street. I inquired for her of every 
one who was likely to know her ; and during the last 
hours of my stay in London, I put into activity every 
means of tracing her that my knowledge of London 
suggested, and the limited extent of my power made 
possible. The street where she had lodged I knew, 
but not the house ; and I remembered, at last, some 
account which she had given of ill treatment from her 
landlord, which made it probable that she had quitted 
those lodgings before we parted. She had few acquain- 
tances ; most people, besides, thought that the earn- 
estness of my inquiries arose from motives which moved 



THE RUNAWAY. 109 

their laughter or their slight regard ; and others, think- 
ing that I was in chase of a girl who had robbed me 
of some trifles, were naturally and excusably indisposed 
to give me any clue to her, if, indeed, they had any 
to give. Finally, as my despairing resource, on the 
day I left London, I put into the hands of the only 
person who (I was sure) must know Ann by sight, from 
having been in company with us once or twice, an ad- 
dress to in shire, at that time the residence 

of my family. But to this hour, I have never heard a 
syllable about her. This, amongst such troubles as 
most men meet with in this life, has been my heaviest 
affliction. If she lived, doubtless we must have been 
sometimes in search of each other, at the very same 
moment, through the mighty labyrinths of London ; 
perhaps even within a few feet of each other, — a bar- 
rier no wider, in a London street, often amounting in 
the end to a separation for eternity ! During some 
years, I hoped that she did live ; and I suppose that, in 
the literal and unrhetorical use of the word myriad^ I 
m-ay say, that on my different visits to London, I have 
looked into many, many myriads of female faces in the 
hope of meeting her. I should know her again amongst 
a thousand, if I saw her for a moment ; for, though not 
handsome, she had a sweet expression of countenance, 
and a peculiar and graceful carriage of the head. I 
sought her, I have said, in hope. So it was for years ; 
but now I should fear to see her ; and her cough, which 
grieved me when I parted with her, is now my conso- 
lation. I now wish to see her no longer, but think of 
her, more gladly, as one long since laid in the grave, — 
in the grave, I would hope, of a Magdalen ; — taken 



110 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

away, before injuries and cruelty had blotted out and 
transfigured her ingenuous nature, or the brutalities of 
ruffians had completed the ruin they had begun. 

So then, Oxford-street, stony-hearted stepmother, 
thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans, and drinkesi 
the tears of children, at length I was dismissed from 
thee ! — the time was come, at last, that I no more 
should pace in anguish thy never-ending terraces ; no 
more should dream, and wake in captivity to the pangs 
of hunger. Successors, too many, to myself and Ann, 
have, doubtless, since then trodden in our footsteps ; 
inheritors of our calamities ; other orphans than Ann 
have sighed ; tears have been shed by other children ; 
and thou, Oxford-street, hast since echoed to the groans 
of innumerable hearts. For myself, however, the storm 
which I had outlived seemed to have been the pledge 
of a long fair weather ; the premature sufferings which 
I had paid down, to have been accepted as a ransom 
for many years to come, as a price of long immunity 
from sorrow ; and if again I walked in London, a soli- 
tary and contemplative man (as oftentimes I did), I 
walked for the most part in serenity and peace of mind. 
And, although it is true that the calamities of my novi- 
tiate in London had struck roots so deeply in my bodily 
constitution that afterwards they shot up and flourished 
afresh, and grew into a noxious umbrage that has over- 
shadowed and darkened my latter years, yet these sec- 
ond assaults of suffering were met with a fortitude more 
confirmed, with the resources of a maturer intellect, 
and with alleviations from sympathizing affection, how 
deep and tender ! 



X. 

THE PRIORY. 

That episode, or impassioned parenthesis in my life, 
which is comprehended in "The Confessions of the 
Opium Eater," had finished ; suppose it over and gone, 
and once more after the storms of London, suppose me 
resting from my dreadful remembrances, in the deep 
monastic tranquillity of St. John's Priory ; and just 
then by accident, with no associates but my mother 
and my uncle. 

What was the Priory like ? Was it young or old, 
handsome or plain ? What was my uncle the Captain 
like ? Young or old, handsome or plain ? Wait a lit- 
tle my reader ; give me time and I will tell you all. 
My uncle's leave of absence from India had not ex- 
pired ; and this accident furnished us all with an oppor- 
tunity of witnessing his preternatural activity. 

In 1800-1801, my mother had become dissatisfied 
with Bath as a residence ; and, being free from all ties 
connecting her with any one county of England rather 
than another, she resolved to traverse the most attrac- 
tive parts of the island, and, upon personal inspection, 
to select a home ; not a ready-built home, but the 
ground on which she might herself create one ; for it 
happened that amongst the few infirmities besetting my 
mother's habits and constitution of mind, was the cost- 
ly one of seeking her chief intellectual excitement in 

(111) 



112 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

architectural creations. The qualifications insisted on 
were these five : good medical advice somewhere in the 
neighborhood ; first rate means of education; elegant, 
(or, what most people might thinlc, aristocratic) society ; 
agreeable scenery : and so fur the difficulty was not in- 
superable in the way of finding all the four advantages 
concentrated. But my mother insisted on a fifth, which 
in those days insured the instant shipwreck of the en- 
tire scheme ; this was a church of England parish cler- 
gyman, who was to be strictly orthodox, faithful to the 
articles of our English church, yet to these articles as 
interpreted by Evangelical divinity. My mother's views 
were precisely those of her friend Mrs. Hannah More, 
of Wilberforce, of Henry Thornton, of Zachary Ma- 
caulay (father of the historian), and generally of those 
who were then known amongst sneerers as " the Clap- 
ham saints." This one requisition it was on which the 
scheme foundered. And the fact merits recording as 
an exposition of the broad religious difference between 
the England of that day and of this. At present, no 
difficulty would be found as to this fifth requisition. 
" Evangelical " clergymen are now sown broad-cast ; 
at that period, there were not, on an average, above six 
or eight in each of the fifty-two counties. 

The conditions, as a whole, were in fact incapable of 
being realized ; where two or three were attained, three 
or two failed. It was too much to exact so many ad- 
vantages from any one place, unless London ; or really, 
if any other place could be looked to with hope in such 
a case, that place was Bath — the very city my mother 
was preparing to leave. Yet, had this been otherwise, 
and the prospect of success more promising, I have not 



THE PRIORY. 113 

a doubt that the pretty gem, which suddenly was offer- 
ed at a price unintelligibly low, in the ancient city of 
Chester, would have availed (as instantly it did avail, 
and, perhaps, ought to have availed) in obscuring those 
five conditions of which else each separately for itself 
had seemed a conditio sine qua non. This gem was an 
ancient house, on a miniature scale, called the Priori/ ; 
and, until the dissolution of religious houses in the 
earlier half of the sixteenth century, had formed part 
of the Priory attached to the ancient church (still 
flourishing) of St. John's. The glory of the house in- 
ternally lay in the monastic kitchen ; and, secondly, in 
what a Frenchman would have called, properly, Sir 
Robert's own apartment* of three rooms ; but, thirdly 
and chiefly, in a pile of ruined archways, most pictu- 
resque so far as they went, but so small that Drury 
Lane could easily have found room for them on its 
stage. These stood in the miniature pleasure-ground, 
and were constantly resorted to by artists for specimens 
of architectural decays, or of nature working for the 
concealment of such decays by her ordinary processes 
of gorgeous floral vegetation. Ten rooms there may 
have been in the Priory, as offered to my mother for 
less than five hundred pounds. A drawing-room, bed- 
rooms, dressing-rooms, etc., making about ten more, 

* Apartment — Our English use of the word " apartment " is absui^d, 
since it leads to total misconceptions. We read in French memoirs in- 
numerable of the kinc/s apartment, of the queen's apartment, etc., and 
for us English the question arises, How ? had the king, had her majesty, 
only one room ? But, my friend, they might have a thousand rooms, 
and yet have only one apartment. An apartment means, in the conti- 
nental use, a section or compartment of an edifice. 



114 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

were added by my mother for a sum under one thou- 
sand pounds. The same miniature scale was observed 
in all these additions. And, as the Priory was not 
within the walls of the city, whilst the river Dee, flow- 
ing immediately below, secured it from annoyance on 
one side, and the church, with its adjacent church-yard, 
insulated it from the tumults of life on all the other 
sides, an atmosphere of conventual stillness and tran- 
quillity brooded over it and all around it forever. 

Such was the house, such was the society, in which I 
now found myself ; and upon the whole I might describe 
myself as being, according to the modern phrase, " in a 
false position." I had, for instance, a vast superiority, 
as was to have been expected, in bookish attainments, 
and in adroitness of logic ; whilst, on the other hand, I 
was ridiculously short-sighted or blind in all fields of 
ordinary human experience. It must not be supposed 
that I regarded my own particular points of superiority, 
or that I used them, with any vanity or view to present 
advantages. On the contrary, I sickened over them, 
and labored to defeat them. But in vain I sowed errors 
in my premises, or planted absurdities in my assump- 
tions. Vainly I tried such blunders as putting four 
terms into a syllogism, which, as all the world knows 
ought to run on three ; a tripod it ought to be, by all 
rules known to man, and, behold, I forced it to become 
a quadruped. Upon my uncle's military haste, and tu- 
multuous energy in pressing his opinions, all such deli- 
cate refinements were absolutely thrown away. With 
disgust J saw, with disgust he saw, that too apparently 
the advantage lay with me in the result. What gave 
another feature of distraction and incoherency to my 



THE PRIORY. 116 

position was, that I still occupied the position of a re- 
puted boy, nay, a child, in the estimate of my audience, 
and of a child in disgrace. Time enough had not pass- 
ed since my elopement from school to win for me, in 
minds so fresh from that remembrance, a station of pu- 
rification and assoilment. Oxford might avail to assoil 
me, and to throw into a distant retrospect my boyish 
trespasses ; but as yet Oxford had not arrived. 

Many discussions wore to me a comic shape. But 
altogether serious were the disputes upon India — a 
topic on sepai^ate grounds equally interesting to us all, 
as the mightiest of English colonies, and the superbest 
monument of demoniac English energy, revealing itself 
in such men as Olive, Hastings, and soon after in the 
two Wellesleys. To my mother, as the grave of one 
brother, as the home of another, and as a new centre 
from which Christianity (she hoped) would mount like 
an eagle ; for just about that time the Bible Society 
was preparing its initial movements ; whilst to my un- 
cle, India appeared as the arena upon which his activi- 
ties were yet to find their adequate career. With re- 
spect to the Christianization of India, my uncle assumed 
a hope which he did not really feel ; and in another 
point, more trying to himself personally, he had soon 
an opportunity for showing the sincerity of this defer- 
ence to his spiritual-minded sister. For, very soon af- 
ter his return to India, he received a civil appointment 
{Superintendent of Military Buildings in Bengal)^ 
highly lucrative, and the more so as it could be held 
conjointly with his military rank ; but a good deal of 
its pecuniary advantages was said to lie in fees, or 
perquisites, privately offered, but perfectly regular and 



116 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

official, which my mother (misunderstanding the Indian 
system) chose to call " bribes." A very ugly word 
was that ; but I argued that even at home, even in the 
courts at Westminster, in the very fountains of justice, 
private fees constituted one part of tlie salaries — a 
fair and official part, so long as Parliament had not 
made such fees illegal by commuting them for known 
and fixed equivalents. 

It was mere ignorance of India, as I dutifully insisted 
against '' Mamma," that could confound these regular 
oriental " nuzzers" with the clandestine wages of cor* 
ruption. The />o^6Ze-ym of French tradition, the pair 
of gloves (though at one time very costly gloves) to an 
English judge of assize on certain occasions, never was 
offered nor received in the light of a bribe. And (until 
regularly abolished by the legislature) I insisted — but 
vainly insisted — that these and similar honoraria ought 
to be accepted, because else you were lowering the 
prescriptive rights and value of the office, which you — 
a mere locum tenens for some coming successor — had 
no right to do upon a solitary scruple or crotchet, 
arising probably from dyspepsia. Better men, no 
doubt, than ever stood in your stockings, had pock- 
eted thankfully the gifts of ancient, time-honored cus- 
tom. My uncle, however, though not with the carnal 
recusancy which besieged the spiritual efforts of poor 
Cuthbert Headrigg, that incorrigible worldling, yet 
still with intermitting doubts, followed my mother's 
earnest entreaties, and the more meritoriously (I con- 
ceive), as he yielded, in a point deeply affecting his 
interest, to a system of arguments very imperfectly con- 
vincing to his understanding. He held the office in 



THE PRIORY. 117 

question for as much (I believe) as eighteen or nine- 
teen years ; and, by knowing old bilious Indians, who 
laughed immoderately at my uncle and my mother, as 
the proper growth of a priory or some such monastic 
establishment, I have been assured that nothing short 
of two hundred thousand pounds ought, under the long 
tenure of office, to have been remitted to England. Un- 
questionably, my uncle's system of living was under no 
circumstances a self-denying one. To enjoy, and to 
make others enjoy — that was his law of action. In- 
deed, a more liberal creature, or one of more princely 
munificence, never lived. 

It might seem useless to call back any fragment of 
conversations relating to India which passed more than 
fifty years ago, were it not for two reasons : one of 
which is this, — that the errors (natural at that time) 
which I vehemently opposed, not from any greater 
knowledge that I had, but from closer reflection, are 
even now the prevailing errors of the English people. 
My mother, for instance, uniformly spoke of the En- 
glish as the subverters of ancient thrones. I, on the 
contrary, insisted that nothing political was ancient in 
India. Our own original opponents, the Rajahs of Oude 
and Bengal, had been all upstarts : in the Mysore, 
again, our more recent opponents, Hydcr, and his son 
Tippoo, were new men altogether, whose grandfathers 
were quite unknown. Why was it that my mother, 
why is it that the English public at this day, connect 
so false an image — that of high, cloudy antiquity — 
with the thrones of India ? It is simply from an old 
habit of associating the spirit of change and rapid revo- 
lution with the activities of Europe ; so that, by a natU' 



118 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

ral reaction of thought, the Orient is figured as the 
home of motionless monotony. 

Another argument against England urged by my 
mother (but equally urged by the English people at this 
day) was, that she had in no eminent sense been a bene- 
factress to India ; or, expressing it in words of later 
date, that the only memorials of our rule, supposing us 
suddenly ejected from India, would be vast heaps of 
champagne-bottles. I, on the other hand, alleged that 
our benefits, like all truly great and lasting benefits 
(religious benefits, for instance), must not be sought in 
external memorials of stone and masonry. Higher by 
far than the Mogul gifts of mile-stones, or travelling 
stations, or even roads and tanks, were the gifts of se- 
curity, of peace, of law, and settled order. These 
blessing were travelling as fast as our rule advanced. 
My mother, in fact, a great reader of the poet Cowper, 
drew from him her notions of Anglo-Indian policy and 
its effects. Cowper, in his " Task," puts the question, — 

"Is India free? and does she wear her plumed 
And jewelled turban with a smile of peace, 
Or do we grind her still? " 

Pretty much the same authority it is which the British 
public of this day has for its craze upon the subject of 
English oppression among the Hindoos. 

My uncle, meantime, who from his Indian experience 
should reasonably have known so much better, was dis- 
posed from the mere passive habits of hearing and reading 
unresistingly so many assaults of this tone against our In- 
dian policy, to go along with my mother. But he was too 
just, when forced into reflection upon the subject, not 



THE PRIORY. 119 

to bend at times to my way of stating tne case for Eng- 
land. Suddenly, however, our Indian discussions were 
brought to a close by the following incident. My uncle 
had b^'ought with him to England some Arabian horses, 
and amongst them a beautiful young Persian mare, call- 
ed Sumroo, the gentlest of her race. Sumroo it was 
that he happened to be riding, upon a frosty day. Un- 
used to ice, she came down with him, and broke his 
right leg. This accident laid him up for a month, dur- 
ing which my mother and I read to him by turns. One 
book, which one day fell to my share by accident, was 
De Foe's " Memoirs of a Cavalier." This book at- 
tempts to give a picture of the Parliamentary war ; but 
in some places an unfair, and everywhere a most super- 
ficial account. I said so ; and my uncle, who had an 
old craze in behalf of the book, opposed me with as- 
perity ; and, in the course of what he said, under some 
movement of ill-temper, he asked me, in a way which I 
felt to be taunting, how I could consent to waste my 
time as I did. Without any answering warmth, I ex- 
plained that my guardians, having quarrelled with me, 
would not grant for my use anything beyond my school 
allowance of one hundred pounds per annum. But was 
it not possible that even this sum might by economy be 
made to meet the necessities of the case ? I replied 
that, from what I had heard, YQvy probably it was. 
Would I undertake an Oxford life upon such terms ? 
Most gladly, I said. Upon that opening he spoke to 
my mother ; and the result was, that, within seven days 
from the above conversation, I found myself entering 
that time-honored university. 



XI. 

OXFORD. 

It was in winter, and in the wintry weather of the 
year 1803, that I first entered Oxford with a view to 
its vast means of education, or rather with a view to 
its vast advantages for study. Once before I had been 
at Oxford : but that was as a transient visitor with 

Lord W , when wo were both children. Now, on 

the contrary, I approached these venerable towers in 
the character of a student, and with the purpose of a 
long connection ; personally interested in the constitu- 
tion of the university, and obscurely anticipating that 
in tliis city, or at least during the period of my nominal 
attachment to this academic body, the remoter parts of 
my future life would unfold before me. All hearts 
'were at this time occupied with the public interests of 
the country. The " sorrow of the time " was ripening 
to a second harvest. Napoleon had commenced his 
Vandal, or rather Hunnish war with Britain, in the 
spring of this year, about eight months before ; and 
profound public interest it was, into which the very 
coldest hearts entered, that a little divided with me the 
else monopolizing awe attached to the solemn act of 
launcliing myself upon the world. That expression 
may seem too strong as applied to one who had already 
been for many months a houseless wanderer in Wales, 
and a solitary roamer in the streets of London. But 
in those situations, it must be remembered, I was an 
(120) 



OXFORD. 121 

unknown, unacknowledged vagrant ; and without money 
I could hardly run much risk, except of breaking my 
neck. The perils, the pains, the pleasures, or the obli- 
gations, of the world, scarcely exist in a proper sense 
for him who has no funds. Perfect weakness is often 
secure : it is by imperfect power, turned against its 
master, that men are snared and decoyed. Here in 
Oxford I should be called upon to commence a sort of 
establishment upon the splendid English scale ; here I 
should share in many duties and responsibilities, and 
should become henceforth an object of notice to a large 
society. Now first becoming separately and individu- 
ally answerable for my conduct, and no longer absorbed 
into the general unit of a family, I felt myself, for the 
first time, burthened with the anxieties of a man, and 
a member of the world. 

Oxford, ancient mother ! hoary with ancestral hon- 
ors, time-honored, and, haply, it may be, time-shattered 
power — I owe thee nothing ! Of thy vast riches I 
took not a shilling, though living amongst multitudes 
who owed to thee their daily bread. Not the less I 
owe thee justice ; for that is a universal debt. And at 
this moment, when I see thee called to thy audit by un- 
just and malicious accusers — men w^ilh the hearts of 
inquisitors and the purposes of robbers — I feel towards 
thee something of filial reverence and duty. However, 
I mean not to speak as an advocate, but as a conscien- 
tious witness in the simplicity of truth ; feeling neither 
hope nor fear of a personal nature, without fee, and 
without favor. 

But, to enter upon my own history, and my sketch 
of Oxford life. — Late on a winter's night, in the lat- 
6 



122 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

ter half of December, ISOS, when a snow-storra, and a 
heavy one, was already gathering in the air, a lazy 
Birmingham coach, moving at four and a half miles an 
hour, brought me through the long northern suburb 
of Oxford, to a shabby coach-inn, situated in the Corn 
Market. Business was out of the question at that hour. 
But tlie next day I assembled all the acquaintances I 
had in the university, or had to my own knowledge : 
and to them, in council assembled, propounded my 
first question ; What college would they, in their su- 
perior state of information, recommend to my choice ? 
For my part, supposing other things equal, I greatly 
preferred the most populous college, as being that in 
which any single member, who might have reasons for 
standing aloof from the general habits of expense, of 
intervisiting, etc., would have the best chance of es- 
caping a jealous notice. However, amongst those 
" other things" which I presumed equal, one held a 
high place in my estimation, which a little inquiry 
showed to be very far from equal. All the colleges 
have chapels, but all have not organs ; nor, amongst 
those which have, is the same large use made of the 
organ. Some preserve the full cathedral service ; oth- 
ers do not. Christ Church, meantime, fulfilled all con- 
ditions : for the chapel here happens to be the cathe- 
dral of the diocese ; the service, therefore, is full and 
ceremonial ; the college, also, is far the most splendid, 
both in numbers, rank, wealth, and influence. Hither 
I resolved to go ; and immediately I prepared to call 
on the head. 

The " head," as he is called generically, of an Ox- 
ford college (his specific appellation varies almost with 



OXFORD. 123 

every college — principal, provost, master, rector, war- 
deu, etc.), is a greater man than the uninitiated sup- 
pose. His situation is generally felt as conferring a 
degree of rank not much less than episcopal ; and, in 
fact, the head of Brazennose at that time, who happen- 
ed to be the Bishop of Bangor, was not held to rank 
much above his brothers in office. Such being the rank 
of heads generally, d fortiori, that of Christ Church 
was to be had in reverence ; and this 1 knew. He is 
always, ex officio, dean of the diocese ; and, in his 
quality of college head, he only, of all deans that ever 
were heard of, is uniformly considered a greater man 
than his own diocesan. But it happened that the pres- 
ent dean had even higher titles to consideration. Dr. 
Cyril Jackson had been tutor to the Prince of Wales 
(George IV.) ; he had repeatedly refused a bishopric ; 
and that, perhaps, is entitled to place a man one de- 
gree above him who has accepted one. He was also 
supposed to have made a bishop, and afterwards, at 
least, it is certain that he made his own brother a bish- 
op. All things weighed. Dr. Cyril Jackson seemed so 
very great a personage that I now felt the value of my 
long intercourse with great Dons in giving me confi- 
dence to face a lion of this magnitude. 

The Dean was sitting in a spacious library or study, 
elegantly, if not luxuriously furnished. Footmen, sta- 
tioned as repeaters, as if at some fashionable rout, gave 
a momentary importance to my unimportant self, by the 
thundering tone of their annunciations. All the ma- 
chinery of aristocratic life seemed indeed to intrench 
this great Don's approaches ; and I was really sur- 
prised that so very great a man should condescend to 



124 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

rise on my entrance. But I soon found that, if the 
Dean's station and relation to the higher orders had 
made him lofty, those same relations had given a pe- 
culiar suavity to his manners. Here, indeed, as on 
other occasions, I noticed the essential misconception, 
as to the demeanor of men of rank, which prevails 
amongst those who have no personal access to their 
presence. In the fabulous pictures of novels (such 
novels as once abounded), and in newspaper reports of 
conversations, real or pretended, between the king and 
inferior persons, we often find the writer expressing his 
sense of aristocratic assumption, by making the king 
address people without their titles. The Duke of Wel- 
lington, for instance, or Lord Liverpool, figures usually, 
in such scones, as " Wellington," or " Arthur," and as 
*' Liverpool." In a very long conversation of a gen- 
eral nature upon the course of my studies, and the pres- 
ent direction of my reading, Dr. Cyril Jackson treated 
me just as ho would have done his equal in station and 
in age. Coming, at length, to the particular purpose 
of my visit at this time to himself, he assumed a little 
more of his official stateliness. He condescended to 
say that it would have given him pleasure to reckon me 
amongst his flock ; " but sir," he said, in a tone of 
some sharpness, " your guardians have acted improper- 
ly. It was their duty to have given me at least one 
year's notice of their intention to place you at Christ 
Church. At present I have not a dog-kennel in my 
college untenanted." Upon this, I observed that noth- 
ing remained for me to do but to apolgize for having 
occupied so much of his time ; that, for myself, I now 
first heard of this preliminary application ; and that, as 



OXFORD. 125 

to ray guardians, I was bound to acquit them of all 
oversight in this instance, they being no parties to my 
present scheme. The Dean expressed his astonishment 
at this statement. I, on my part, was just then mak- 
ing my parting bows, and had reached tlie door, wlien 
a gesture of the Dean's, courteously waving me back 
to the sofa I had quitted, invited me to resume my ex- 
planations ; and I had a conviction at the moment that 
the interview would have terminated in tlie Dean's 
suspending his standing rule in my f\ivor. But, just at 
that moment, the thundering heralds of the Dean's Imll 
announced some man of high rank : the sovereign of 
Christ Church seemed distressed for a moment; but 
then recollecting himself, bowed in a way to indicate 
that I was dismissed. And thus it happened that I did 
not become a member of Christ Church. 

A few days passed in thoughtless indecision. At the 
end of that time, a trivial difficulty arose to settle my 
determination. I had brought about fifty guineas to 
Oxford ; but the expenses of an Oxford inn, with al- 
most daily entertainments to young friends, had made 
such inroads upon this sum, that, after allowing for the 
contingencies incident to a college initiation, enough 
would not remain to meet the usual demand for what is 
called " caution money." This is a small sum, properly 
enough demanded of every student, when matriculated, 
as a pledge for meeting any loss from unsettled arrears, 
such as his sudden death or his unannounced departure 
might else continually be inflicting upon his college. 
By releasing the college, therefore, from all necesstty 
(ur degrading vigilance or perspcution, this demand 



126 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

does, in effect, operate beneficially to the feelings of all 
parties. In most colleges it amounts to twenty-five 
pounds : in one only it was considerably less. And 
this trifling consideration it was, concurring with a rep- 
utation at that time for relaxed discipline, which finally 

determined me in preferring W College to all 

others. This college had the capital disadvantage, in 
my eyes, that its chapel possessed no organ, and no 
musical service. But any other choice would have 
driven me to an instant call for more money — a meas- 
ure which, as too flagrantly in contradiction to the 
whole terms on which I had volunteered to undertake 
an Oxford life, I could not find nerves to face. 

The reader will understand that a year spent either 
in the valleys of Wales, or upon the streets of Lon- 
don, a wanderer, too often houseless in both situa- 
tions, might naturally have peopled the mind of one 
constitutionally disposed to solemn contemplations with 
memorials of human sorrow and strife too profound to 
pass away for years. 

Thus, then, it was — past experience of a very pe- 
culiar kind, the agitations of many lives crowded into 
the compass of a year or two, in combination with a 
peculiar structure of mind — offered one explanation 
of the very remarkable and unsocial habits which I 
adopted at college ; but there was another not less 
powerful, and not less unusual. In stating this, I shall 
seem to some persons, covertly designing an affront to 
Oxford. But that is far from my intention. It is no* 
ways peculiar to Oxford, but will, doubtless, be found 
in every university throughout the world, that the 



OXFORD. 127 

jrounger part of the members — the undergraduates, 1 
mean, generally, whose chief business must have lain 
amongst the great writers of Greece and Rome — can- 
not have found leisure to cultivate extensively their own 
domestic literature. Not so much that time will have 
been wanting ; but that the whole energy of the mind, 
and the main course of the subsidiary studies and re- 
searches, will naturally have been directed to those 
difficult languages amongst which lie their daily tasks. 
I make it no subject of complaint or scorn, therefore, 
but simply state it as a fact, that few or none of the 
Oxford undergraduates, with whom parity of standing 
threw me into collision at my first outset, knew any- 
thing at all of English literature. The Spectator seem- 
ed to me the only English book of a classical rank 
which they had read ; and even this less for its inimi- 
table delicacy, humor, and refined pleasantry in dealing 
with manners and characters, than for its insipid and 
meagre essays, ethical or critical. This was no fault of 
theirs : tliey had ])eeu sent to the book chiefly as a sub- 
ject for Latin translations, or of other exercises ; and, 
in such a view, the vague generalities of superficial 
morality were more useful and more manageable than 
sketches of manner or character, steeped in national 
peculiarities. To translate the terms of whig politics 
into classical Latin, would be as difficult as it might be 
for a whig himself to give a consistent account of those 
politics from the year 1688. Natural, however, and 
excusable, as this ignorance might be, to myself it was 
intolerable and incomprehensible. Already, at fifteen, 
I had made myself familiar with the great English poets. 



128 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

About sixteen, or not long after, my interest in the 
story of Chatterton had carried me over the whole 
ground of the Rowley controversy ; and that contro- 
versy, by a necessary consequence, had so familiarized 
me with the " Black Letter," that I had begun to find 
an unaffected pleasure in the ancient English metrical 
romances ; and in Chaucer, though acquainted as yet 
only with part of his works, I had perceived and had 
felt profoundly those divine qualities, which, even at 
this day, are so languidly acknowledged by his unjust 
countrymen. With this knowledge, and this enthusias- 
tic knowledge of the elder poets — of those most re- 
mote from easy access — I could not well be a stranger 
IB. other walks of our literature, more on a level with 
the general taste, and nearer to modern diction, and, 
therefore, more extensively multiplied by the press. 

In some parts, then, having even a profound knowl- 
edge of our literature, in all parts having some, I felt 
it to be impossible that I should familiarly associate 
with those who had none at all ; not so much as a mere 
historical knowledge of the literature in its capital 
names and their chronological succession. Do I men- 
tion this in disparagement of Oxford ? By no means. 
Among the undergraduates of higher standing, and oc- 
casionally, perhaps, of my own, I have since learn- 
ed that many might have been found eminently accom- 
plished in this particular. But seniors do not seek after 
juniors ; they must be sought ; and, with my previous 
bias to solitude, a bias equally composed of impulses 
and motives, I had no disposition to take trouble in 
seeking any man for any purpose. 



OXFORD. 129 

Bat, on this subject, a fact still remains to be told, 
of which I am justly proud ; and it will serve, beyond 
anything else that I can say, to measure the degree of 
my mtellectual development. On coming to Oxford, I 
had taken up one position in advance of my age by full 
thirty years : that appreciation of Wordsworth, which 
it has taken full thirty years to establish amongst the 
public, I had already made, and had made operative to 
my own intellectual culture in the same year when I 
clandestinely quitted school. Already, in 1802, I had 
addressed a letter of fervent admiration to Mr. Words- 
worth. I did not send it until the spring of 1803 ; and, 
from misdirection, it did not come into his hands for 
some months. But I had an answer from Mr. Words- 
worth before I was eighteen ; and that my letter was 
thought to express the homage of an enlightened ad- 
mirer, may be inferred from the fact that his answer 
was long and full. 

Oxford, ancient mother ! and thou, Cambridge, twin- 
light of England ! be vigilant and erect, for the enemy 
stands at all your gates ! Two centuries almost have 
passed since the boar was within your vineyards, laying 
waste and desolating your heritage. Yet that storm 
was not final, nor that eclipse total. May this also 
prove but a trial and a shadow of affliction ! which 
affliction, may it prove to you, mighty incorporations, 
what, sometimes, it is to us, poor, frail homunculi — a 
process of purification, a solemn and oracular warning! 
And, when that cloud is overpast, then, rise, ancient 
powers, wiser and better — readv, like the lafxnadricpoQOi 
6* 



130 BEAUTIES OF DB QUINCET. 

of old, to enter upon a second stadium^ and to transmit 
the sacred torch through a second period of twice* five 
hundred years. So prays a loyal alumuus, whose pre- 
sumption, if any be, in taking upon himself a monitory 
tone, is privileged by zeal and filial anxiety. 

* Oxford may confessedly claim a duration of that extent ; and the 
pretensions of Cambridge, in that respect, if less aspiring, are however, 
as I believe, less accurately determined. 



XIL 

OPIUM. 

It is so long since I first took opium, that if it had 
been a trifling incident in my life, I might have forgot- 
ten its date : but cardinal events are not to be forgot- 
ten ; and, from circumstances connected with it, I re- 
member that it must be referred to the autumn of 1804. 
During that season I was in London, having come thith- 
er for the first time since my entrance at college. And 
my introduction to opium arose in the following way : 
From an early age I had been accustomed to wash my 
head in cold water at least once a day ; being suddenly 
seized with tooth-ache, I attributed it to some relaxa- 
tion caused by an accidental intermission of that prac- 
tice ; jumped out of bed, plunged my head into a basin 
of cold water, and, with hair thus wetted, went to 
sleep. The next morning, as I need hardly say, I 
awoke with excruciating rheumatic pains of the head 
and face, from which I had hardly any respite for about 
twenty days. On the twenty-first day I think it was, 
and on a Sunday, that I went out into the streets ; rath- 
er to run away, if possible, from my torments, than with 
any distinct purpose. By accident, I met a college ac- 
quaintance, who recommended opium. Opium ! dread 
agent of unimaginable pleasure and pain ! I had heard 
of it as I had heard of manna or of ambrosia, but no 
further ; how unmeaning a sound was it at that time ! 

(131) 



132 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

what solemn chords does it now strike upon my heart ! 
what heart-quaking vibrations of sad and happy remem- 
brances ! Reverting for a moment to these, I feel a 
mystic importance attached to the minutest circumstan- 
ces connected with the place, and the time, and the 
man (if man he was), that first laid open to me the 
paradise of opium-eaters. It was a Sunday afternoon, 
wet and cheerless ; and a duller spectacle this earth of 
ours has not to show than a rainy Sunday in London. 
My road homewards lay through Oxford-street ; and 
near " the stately Pantheon " (as Mr. Wordsworth has 
obligingly called it) I saw a druggist's shop. The 
druggist (unconscious minister of celestial pleasures ! ) 
as if in sympathy with the rainy Sunday, looked dull 
and stupid, just as any mortal druggist might be ex- 
pected to look on a Sunday ; and when I asked for the 
tincture of opium, he gave it to me as any other man 
might do ; and, furthermore, out of my shilling return- 
ed to me what seemed to be a real copper half-penny, 
taken out of a real wooden drawer. Nevertheless, in 
spite of such indications of humanity, he has ever since 
existed in my mind as a beatific vision of an immortal 
druggist, sent down to earth on a special mission to 
myself. 

Arrived at my lodgings, it may be supposed that I 
lost not a moment in taking the quantity prescribed. I 
was necessarily ignorant of the whole art and mystery 
of opium-taking ; and what I took, I took under every 
disadvantage. But I took it ; and in an hour, — oh 
heavens ! what a revulsion ! what an upheaving, from 
its lowest depths, of the inner spirit ! what an apoca- 
lypse of the world within me ! That my pains had 



OPIUM. 133 

vanished was now a trifle in my eyes ; this negative 
effect was swallowed up in the immensity of those posi- 
tive effects which had opened before me, in the abyss 
of divine enjoyment thus suddenly revealed. Here was 
a panacea, a cpaoaaitov venepOec^ for all human woes ; 
here was the secret of happiness, about which philos- 
ophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discov- 
ered ; happiness might now be bought for a penny, 
and carried in the waistcoat-pocket ; portable ecstasies 
might be had corked up in a pint-bottle ; and peace of 
mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail-coach. 
But, if I t<ilk in this way, the reader will think I am 
laughing ; and I can assure him that nobody will laugh 
long who deals much with opium : its pleasures even 
are of a grave and solemn complexion ; and, in his 
happiest state, the opium-eater cannot present himself 
in the character of U Allegro ; even then, he speaks 
and thinks as becomes II Penseroso. Nevertheless, I 
have a very reprehensible way of jesting, at times, in 
the midst of my own misery ; and, unless when I am 
checked by some more powerful feelings, I am afraid I 
shall be guilty of this indecent practice even in these 
annals of suffering or enjoyment. 

******** 

Courteous, and, I hope, indulgent reader (for all my 
readers must be indulgent ones, or else, I fear, I shall 
shock them too much to count on their courtesy), hav- 
ing accompanied me thus far, now let me request you 
to move onwards, for about eight years ; that is to 
say, from 1804 (when I said that my acquaintance 
with opium first began) to 1812. The years of aca- 
demic life are now over and gone, — almost forgotten ; 



134 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

the student's cap no longer presses my temples ; if my 
cap exists at all. it presses those of some youthful schol- 
ar, I trust, as happy as myself, and as passionate a 
lover of knowledge. My gown is, by this time, I dare 
to say, in the same condition with many thousands of 
excellent books in the Bodleian, namely, diligently 
perused by certain studious moths and worms ; or de- 
parted, however (which is all that I know of its fate), 
to that great reservoir of somewhere^ to which all the 
tea-cups, tea-caddies, tea-pots, tea-kettles, &c.,have de- 
parted (not to speak of still frailer vessels, such as 
glasses, decanters, bed-makers, <fec.), which occasional 
resemblances in the present generation of teacups, <fec., 
remind me of having once possessed, but of whose de- 
parture and final fate, I, in common with most gowns- 
men of either university, could give, I suspect, but an 
obscure and conjectural history. The persecutions of 
the chapel-bell, sounding its unwelcome summons to 
six o'clock matins, interrupts my slumbers no longer ; 
the porter who rang it, upon whose beautiful nose 
(bronze, inlaid with copper) I wrote, in retaliation, so 
many Greek epigrams whilst I was dressing, is dead, 
and has ceased to disturb anybody ; and 1, and many 
others who suffered much from his tintinnabulous pro- 
pensities, have now agreed to overlook his errors, and 
have forgiven him. Even with the bell I am now in 
charity ; it rings, I suppose, as formerly, thrice a day ; 
and cruelly annoys, , I doubt not, many worthy gentle- 
men, and disturbs their peace of mind ; but, as to me, 
in this year 1812, I regard its treacherous voice no 
longer (treacherous I call it, for, by some refinement 
of malice, it spoke in as sweet and silvery tones as if it 



OPIUM. 136 

had been inviting one to a party) ; its tones have no 
longer, indeed, power to reach me, let the wind sit as 
favorable as the malice of the bell itself could wish ; 
for I am two hundred and fifty miles away from it, and 
buried in the depth of mountains. And what am I 
doing amongst the mountains ? Taking opium^ Yes, 
but what else ? Why, reader, in 1812, the year we 
are now arrived at, as well as for some years previous, 
I have been chiefly studying German metaphysics, in 
the writings of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, &c. And how, 
and in what manner, do I live ? in short, what class or 
description of men do I belong to ? I am at this pe- 
riod, namely, in 1812, living in a cottage ; and with a 
single female servant (Jioni soil qui mat y pense)^ who, 
amongst my neighbors, passes by the name of my 
" house-keeper." And, as a scholar and a man of 
learned education, and in that sense a gentleman, I 
may presume to class myself as an unworthy member 
of that indefinite body called gentlemen. Partly on 
the ground I have assigned, perhaps, — partly because, 
from my having no visible calling or business, it is 
rightly judged that I must be living on my private for- 
tune, — I am so classed by my neighbors ; and, by the 
courtesy of modem England, I am usually addressed 
on letters, <fec.. Esquire., though having, I fear, in the 
rigorous construction of heralds, but slender preten 
sions to that distinguished honor; — yes, in popular es- 
timation, I am X. Y. Z., Esquire, but not Justice of 
the Peace, nor Gustos Rotulorum. Am I married ? 
Not yet. And I still take opium ? On Saturday nights. 
And, perhaps, have taken it unblushingly ever smce 
" the rainy Sunday." and " the stately Pantheon," and 



136 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

" the beatific druggist" of 1804 ? Even so. And how 
do I find my health after all this opium-eating ? in 
short, how do I do ? Why, pretty well, I thank you, 
reader. At the same time, I have been only r dilettante 
eater of opium ; eight years' practice, even, with the 
single precaution of allowing sufficient intervals be- 
tween every indulgence, has not been sufficient to make 
opium necessary to me as an article of daily diet. But 
now comes a different era. Move on, if you please, 
reader, to 1813. In the summer of the year we have 
just quitted, I had suffered much in bodily health from 
distress of mind connected with a very melancholy 
event. This event, being no ways related to the sub- 
ject now before me, further than through bodily illness 
which it produced, I need not more particularly notice. 
Whether this illness of 1812 had any share in that of 
1813, I know not; but so it was, that, in the latter 
year, I was attacked by a most appalling irritation of 
the stomach, in all respects the same as that which had 
caused me so much suffering in youth, and accompa- 
nied by a revival of all the old dreams. 

I postulate that at the time I began to take opium 
daily, I could not have done otherwise. Whether, in- 
deed, afterwards, I might not have succeeded in break- 
ing off the habit, even when it seemed to me that all 
efforts would be unavailing, and whether many of the 
innumerable efforts which I did make might not have 
been carried much further, and my gradual re-conquests 
of ground lost might not have been followed up much 
more energetically, — these are questions which I must 
decline. Perhaps I might make out a case of pallia- 
tion ; but — shall I speak ingenuously ? — I confess it, 



OPIUM. 137 

as a besetting infirmity of mine, that I am too much of 
an Eudaemonist ; I hanker too much after a state of 
happiness, both for myself and others ; I cannot face 
misery, whetlier my own or not, with an eye of sufficient 
firmness ; and am 4ittle capable of encountering pres- 
ent pain for the sake of any reversionary benefit. 

Whetlier desperate or not, however, the issue of the 
struggle in 1813 was what I have mentioned ; and from 
this date the reader is to consider me as a regular and 
confirmed opium-eater, of whom to ask whether on any 
particular day he had or had not taken opium, would be 
to ask whether his lungs had performed respiration, or 
the heart fulfilled its functions. You understand now, 
reader, what I am ; and your are by this time aware, 
that no old gentleman, " with a snow-white beard," will 
have any chance of persuading me to surrender " the 
little golden receptacle of the pernicious drug." No. 
I give notice to all, w^iether moralists or surgeons, that 
whatever be their pretensions and skill in their respective 
lines of practice, they must not hope for any counte- 
nance from me, if they think to begin by any savage 
proposition for a Lent or Ramadam of abstinence from 
opium. This, then, being all fully understood between 
us, we shall in future sail before the w^ind. Now, then, 
reader, from 1813, where all tliis time we have been 
sitting down and loitering, rise up, if you please, and 
walk forward about three years more. Now draw up 
the curtain, and you shall see me in a new character. 

Let there be a cottage, standing in a valley, eighteen 
miles from any town ; no spacious valley, but about two 
miles long by three quarters of a mile in average width, 
— the benefit of which provision is, that all the families 



138 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

resident within its circuit will compose, as it were, one 
larger household, personally familiar to your eye, and 
more or less interesting to your affections. Let the 
mountains be real mountains, between three and four 
thousand feet high, and the cottagaa real cottage, not 
(as a witty author has it) " a cottage with a double 
coach-house ; " let it be, in fact (for I must abide by 
the actual scene), a white cottage, embowered with 
flowering shrubs, so chosen as to unfold a succession of 
flowers upon the walls, and clustering around the win- 
dows, through all the months of spring, summer, and 
autumn ; beginning, in fact, with May roses, and ending 
with jasmine. Let it, however, 7iot be spring, nor sum- 
mer, nor autumn ; but winter, in its sternest shape. 

From the latter weeks of October to Christmas-eve, 
therefore, is the period during which happiness is in 
season, which, in my judgment, enters the room with 
the tea-tray ; for tea, though ridiculed by those who are 
naturally of coarse nerves, or are become so from wine- 
drinking, and are not susceptible of influence from so 
refined a stimulant, will always be the favorite beverage 
of the intellectual ; and, for my part, I would have 
joined Dr. Johnson in a bellum internecinum against 
Jonas Hanway, or any other impious person who should 
presume to disparage it. But here, to save myself the 
trouble of too much verbal description, I will introduce 
a painter, and give him directions for the rest of the 
picture. Painters do not like white cottages, unless a 
good deal weather-stained ; but, as the reader now 
understands that it is a winter night, his services will 
not be required except for the inside of the house. 

Paint me, then, a room seventeen feet by twelve, and 



OPIUM. 139 

not more than seven and a half feet high. This, reader, 
is somewhat ambitiously styled, in my family, the draw- 
ing-room ; but, being contrived " a double debt to pay," 
it is also, and more justly, termed the library ; for it 
happens that books are the only article of property in 
which I am richer than my neighbors. Of these I have 
about five thousand, collected gradually since my eight- 
eenth year. Therefore, painter, put as many as you 
can into this room. Make it populous with books, and 
furthermore, paint me a good fire ; and furniture plain 
and modest, befitting the unpretending cottage of a 
scholar. And near the fire paint me a tea-table ; and 
(as it is clear that no creature can come to see one, such 
a stormy night) place only two cups and saucers on the 
tea-tray ; and if you know how to paint such a thing 
symbolically, or otherwise, paint me an eternal tea-pot, 
— a parte ante, and a parte post; for I usually drink 
tea from eight o'clock at night to four in the morning. 
And, as it is very unpleasant to make tea, or to pour it 
out for one's self, paint me a lovely young woman, sit- 
ting at the table. Paint her arms like Aurora's, and 
her smiles like Hebe's ; — but no, dear M., not even in 
jest let me insinuate that thy power to illuminate my 
cottage rests upon a tenure so perishable as mere per- 
sonal beauty ; or that the witchcraft of angelic smiles 
lies within the empire of any earthly pencil. Pass, 
then, my good painter, to something more within its 
power; and the next article brought forward should 
naturally be myself, — a picture of the Opium-eater, 
with his " little golden receptacle of the pernicious 
drug " lying beside him on the table. As to the opium, 
I have no objection to see a picture of that, though I 



140 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

would ratber see the original ; you may paint it if you 
choose : but I apprize you that no " little" receptacle 
would even in 1816, answer my purpose, who was at a dis- 
tance from the "stately Pantheon," and all druggists 
(mortal or otherwise). No : you may as well paint the 
real receptacle, which was not of gold, but of glass, and 
as much like a wine decanter as possible. Into this you 
may put a quart of ruby-colored laudanum ; that, and 
a book of German metaphysics placed by its side, will 
sufficiently attest my being in the neighborhood ; but as 
to myself, there I demur. I admit that, naturally, I 
ought to occupy the foreground of the picture; that 
being the hero of the piece, or, (if you choose) the 
criminal at the bar, my body should be had into court. 
This seems reasonable ; but why should I confess, on 
this point, to a painter ? or, why confess at all ? If 
the public) into whose private ear I am confidentially 
whispering my confessions, and not into any painter's) 
should chance to have framed some agreeable picture 
for itself of the Opium-eater's exterior, — should have 
ascribed to him, romantically, an elegant person, or a 
handsome face, why should I barbarously tear from it 
so pleasing a delusion, — pleasing both to the public and 
to me ? No : paint me, if at all, according to your 
own fancy ; and, as a painter's fancy should teem with 
beautiful creations, I cannot fail, in that way, to be a 
gainer. And now, reader, we have run through all the 
ten categories of my condition, as it stood about 1816 
— 1817, up to the middle of which latter year I judge 
myself to have been a happy man ; and the elements of 
that happiness I have endeavored to place before you^ 
in the above sketch of the interior of a scholar's library, 



OPIUM. 242 

in a cottage among the mountains, on a stormy winter 
evening. 

But now farewell, along farewell, to happiness, winter 
or summer! farewell to smiles and laughter! farewell 
to peace of mind ! farewell to hope and tranquil dreams, 
and to the blessed consolations of sleep 1 For more 
than three years and a half I am summoned away from 
these ; I am how arrived at an Iliad of woes. 

******** 



XIII. 

FIRST PLUNGE INTO AUTHORDOM. 

In 1821, when I went up to London, avowedly for 
the purpose of exercising my pen, as the one sole source 
then open to me for extricating myself from a special 
embarassment, (failing which case of dire necessity, I 
believe that I should never have written a line for the 
press ; ) I obtained an introduction, from Mr. Talfourd, 
to Messrs. Taylor and Hersey, who had very recently 
purchased '' The London Magazine^'' and were them- 
selves joint editors of that journal. 

The terms they held out to contributors were ultra- 
munificent, — more so than had yet been heard of in 
any quarter whatsoever ; and upon that understanding — 
seeing that money was just then of necessity, the one 
sole object to which I looked in the cultivation of lite- 
rature, — naturally enough it happened that to them I 
offered my earliest paper, viz., " The Confessions of an 
English Opium Eater." 

The London Magazine was at that time brilliantly 
supported and, in 1821-23, amongst my own collabo- 
rate iirs were : — Charles Lamb ; Hazlitt ; Allan Cun- 
ningham ; Hood ; Hamilton Reynolds ; Carey, the un- 
rivalled translator of Dante ; Crow, the Public Orator 
of Oxford. Certainly a literary Pleiad might have 
been gathered out of the stars connected with this 
journal. 

(142) 



FIRST PLUNGE INTO AUTHORDOM. 143 

In London I lived in the most austere retirement ; 
and the few persons whom I saw occasionally, or whose 
hospitalities I received, were gens de plume, and pro- 
fessedly of my own order as practising literati, but of 
the highest pretensions. 



XIV. 

MY HOME. 

From 1808-9, througli a period of about hventy 
years in succession^ I may describe my domicil as be- 
ing amongst the lakes and mountains of Westmoreland. 
It is true, I often made excursions to London, Bath, 
and its neighborhood, or northwards to Edinburgh; 
and, perhaps, on an average, passed one fourth of each 
year at a distance from this district ; but here only it 
was that henceforwards I had a house and a small es- 
tablishment. The house, for a very long course of 
years, was the cottage in Grasmere, hallowed to the ad- 
mirers of Mr. Wordsworth, by his seven years' occupa- 
tion of its pretty chambers and its rocky orchard ; a 
little domain which he has himself apostrophised as the 
" lowest stair in that magnificent temple, forming the 
north-eastern boundary of Grasmere." 

In Westmoreland, I found more and more a shelter 
and an anchor for my own feeliugs. Originally, the 
motive which drew me to this country, in combination 
with its own exceeding beauty, had been the society of 
Wordsworth. Other attractions had arisen ; different 
in kind ; equally potent in degree. These stepped in 
to enchain mc, precisely as my previous chains were 
unlinking themselves, and leaving me in freedom. 



(144) 



DREAMS. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTICE. 

In 1821, as a contribution to a periodical work, — 
in 1822, as a separate volume, — appeared the " Con- 
fessions of an English Opium-Eater." The object of 
that work was to reveal something of the grandeur 
which belongs potentially to human dreams. Whatever 
may be the number of those in whom this faculty of 
dreaming splendidly can be supposed to lurk, there are 
not perhaps very many in whom it is developed. He 
whose talk is of oxen, will probably dream of oxen, 
and the condition of human life which yokes so vast a 
majority to a daily experience incompatible with much 
elevation of thought, oftentimes neutralizes the tone of 
grandeur in the reproductive faculty of dreaming, even 
for those whose minds are populous with solemn im- 
agery. Habitually to dream magnificently, a man must 
have a constitutional determination to reverie. This in 
the first place, and even this, where it exists strongjy, 
is too much liable to disturbance from the gathering 
agitation of our present English life. Already, in this 
year 1845, what by the procession through fifty years 
of mighty revolutions amongst the kingdoms of the 
earth, what by the continual development of vast phy- 
sical agencies, — steam in all its applications, light 
getting under harness as a slave for man,* powers from 
heaven descending upon education and accelerations of 
the press, powers from hell (as it might seem, but these 

* Daguerreotype, &c. 

(147) 



148 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

also celestial) coming round upon artillery and the 
forces of destruction, — the eye of the calmest observ- 
er is troubled ; the brain is haunted as if by some 
jealousy of ghostly beings moving amongst us ; and it 
becomes too evident that, unless this colossal pace of 
advance can be retarded (a thing not to be expected), 
or, which is happily more probable, can be met by 
counter forces of corresponding magnitude, forces in 
the direction of religion or profound philosophy, that 
shall radiate centrifugally against this storm of life so 
perilously centripetal towards the vortex of the merely 
human, left to itself, the natural tendency of so chaotic 
a tumult must be to evil ; for some minds to lunacy, 
for others to a reagency of fleshly torpor. How much 
this fierce condition of eternal hurry upon an arena too 
exclusively human in its interests is likely to defeat the 
grandeur which is latent in all men, may be seen in the 
ordinary effect from living too constantly in varied com- 
pany. The word dissipation, in one of its uses, ex- 
presses that effect ; the action of tliought and feeling is 
too much dissipated and squandered. To reconcen- 
trate them into meditative habits, a necessity is felt 
by all observing persons for sometimes retiring from 
crowds. No man ever will unfold the capacities of his 
own intellect who does not at least checker his life 
with solitude. How much solitude, so much power. 
Or, if not true in that rigor of expression, to this for- 
mula undoubtedly it is that the wise rule of life must 
approximate. 

Among the powers in man which suffers by this too 
intense life of the social instincts, none suffers more 
than the power of dreaming. Let no man think this a 



DREAMS. 149 

trifle. The madiinery for dreaming planted in the hu- 
man brain was not planted for nothing. That faculty, 
in alliance with the mystery of darkness, is the one 
great tube through which man communicates with the 
shadowy. And the dreaming organ, in connection with 
the heart, the eye and the ear, compose the magnificent 
apparatus which forces the infinite into the chambers 
of a human brain, and throws dark reflections from 
eternities below all life upon the mirrors of the sleep- 
ing mind. 

But if this faculty suffers from the decay of solitude, 
which is becoming a visionary idea in England, on the 
other hand, it is certain that some merely physical 
agencies can and do assist the faculty of dreaming al- 
most preternaturally. Amongst these is intense exer- 
cise ; to some extent at least, and for some persons ; 
but beyond all others is opium, which indeed seems to 
possess a specific power in that direction ; not merely 
for exalting the colors of dream-scenery, but for deep- 
ening its shadows ; and, above all, for strengthening 
the sense of its fearful realities. 

The first notice I had of any important change going 
on in this part of my physical economy, was from the 
reawaking of a state of eye generally incident to 
childhood, or exalted states of irritability. I know 
not whether my reader is aware that many children, 
perhaps most, have a power of painting, as it were, 
upon the darkness, all sorts of phantoms : in some that 
power is simply a mechanic affection of the eye ; others 
have a voluntary or semi-voluntary power to dismiss or 
summon them ; or, as a child once said to me, when I 
questioned him on this matter, " I can tell them to go, 



150 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

and they go ; but sometimes they come when I don't 
tell them to come." In the middle of 1817, 1 think 
it was, that this faculty became positively distressing to 
me : at night, when I lay awake in bed, vast proces- 
sions passed along in mournful pomp ; friezes of never- 
ending stories, that to my feelings were as sad and 
solemn as if they were stories drawn from times before 
(Edipus or Priam, before Tyre, before Memphis. And, 
at the same time, a corresponding change took place 
in my dreams ; a theatre seemed suddenly opened and 
lighted up within my brain, which presented, nightly, 
spectacles of more than earthly splendor. And the 
four following facts may be mentioned, as noticeable at 
this time : 

I. That, as the creative state of the eye increased, a 
sympathy seemed to arise between the waking and the 
dreaming stales of the brain in one point, — that what- 
soever I happened to call up and to trace by a volun- 
tary act upon the darkness was very apt to transfer it- 
self to my dreams ; so that I feared to exercise this 
faculty ; for, as Midas turned all things to gold, that 
yet baffled his hopes and defrauded his human desires, 
so whatsoever things capable of being visually repre- 
sented I did but think of in the darkness, immediately 
shaped themselves into phantoms of the eye ; and, by a 
process apparently no less inevitable, when thus once 
traced in faint and visionary colors, like writings in 
sympathetic ink, they were drawn out, by the fierce 
chemistry of my dreams, into insufferable splendor that 
fretted my heart. 

II. For this, and all other changes in my dreams, 
were accompanied by deep seated anxiety and gloomy 



DREAMS. 151 

Qielancholy, such as are wholly incommunicable by 
words. I seemed every night to descend — not meta- 
phorically, but literally to descend — into chasms and 
sunless abysses, depths below depths, from which it 
seemed hopeless that I could ever reascend. Nor did 
I, by waking, feel that I had reascended. This I do 
not dwell upon ; because the state of gloom which at- 
tended these gorgeous spectacles, amounting at least to 
utter darkness, as of some suicidal despondency, can- 
not be approached by words. 

III. The sense of space, and in the end the sense of 
time, were both powerfully affected. Buildings, land- 
scapes, <fec., were exhibited in proportions so vast as 
the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space swelled, 
and was amplified to an extent of unutterable infinity. 
This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast 
expansion of time. I sometimes seemed to have lived 
for seventy or one hundred years in one night ; nay, 
sometimes had feelings representative of a millennium, 
passed in that time, or, however, of a duration far be- 
yond the limits of any human experience. 

lY. The minutest incidents of childhood, or forgot- 
ten scenes of later years, were often revived. I could 
not be said to recollect them ; for if I had been told 
of them when waking, I should not have been able to 
acknowledge them as parts of my past experience. But 
placed as they were before me, in dreams like intui- 
tions, and clothed in all their evanescent circumstances 
and accompanying feelings, I recognized them instan- 
taneously. I was once told by a near relative of mine, 
that having in her childhood fallen into a river, and 
being on the very verge of death but for the critical 



152 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

assistance which reached her, she saw in a moment her 
whole life, in its minutest incidents, arrayed before her 
simultaneously as in a mirror ; and she had a facultj 
developed as suddenly for comprehending the whole 
and every part. This, from some opium experiences 
of mine, I can believe ; I have, indeed, seen the same 
thing asserted twice in modern books, and accompanied 
by a remark which I am convinced is true, namely, 
that the dread book of account, which the Scriptures 
speak of, is, in fact, the mind itself of each individual. 
Of this, at least, I feel assured, that there is no such 
thing as forgetting possible to the mind ; a thousand 
accidents may and will interpose a veil between our 
present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the 
mind. Accidents of the same sort will also rend away 
this veil ; but alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the 
inscription remains forever ; just as the stars seem to 
withdraw before the common light of day, whereas, in 
fact, we all know that it is the light which is drawn over 
them as a veil ; and that they are waiting to be reveal- 
ed, when the obscuring daylight shall have withdrawn. 
June, 1819. — I have had occasion to remark, at 
various periods of my life, that the deaths of those 
whom we love, and, indeed, the contemplation of death 
generally, is {cceteris paribus) more affecting in sum- 
mer than in any other season of the year. And the 
reasons are these three, I think : first, that the visible 
heavens in summer appear far higher, more distant, and 
(if such a solecism may be excused) more infinite ; the 
clouds by which chiefly the eye expounds the distance 
of the blue pavilion stretched over our heads are in 
summer more voluminous, massed, and accumulated in 



DREAMS. 153 



far grander and more towering piles: secondly, the 
light and the appearance of the declining and the set- 
ting sun are much more fitted to be types and charac- 
ters of the infinite : and, thirdly (which is the main 
reason), the exuberant and riotous prodigality of life 
naturally forces the mind more powerfully upon the an- 
tagonist thought of death, and the wintry sterility oi 
the grave. For it may be observed, generally, that 
wherever two thoughts stand related to each other by a 
law of antagonism, and exist, as it were, by mutual 
repulsion, they are apt to suggest each other. On these 
accounts it is that I find it impossible to banish the 
thought of death when I am walking alone in the end- 
less days of summer ; and any particular death, if not 
more affecting, at least haunts my mind more obsti- 
nately and besiegingly, in that season. Perhaps this 
cause, and a slight incident which I omit, might have 
been the immediate occasion of the following dream, 
to which, however, a predisposition must always have 
existed in ray mind ; but having been once roused, it 
never left me, and split into a thousand fantastic va- 
rieties, which often suddenly reunited, and composed 
again the original dream. 

I thought that it was a Sunday morning in May; 
that it was Easter Sunday, and as yet very early in the 
morning. I was standing, as it seemed to me, at the 
door of my own cottage, Right before me lay the very 
scene which could really be commanded from that situ- 
ation, but exalted, as was usual, and solemnized by the 
power of dreams. There were the same mountains, 
and the same lovely valley at their feet ; but the moun- 
tains were raised to more than Alpine height, and there 
7* 



154 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

was interspace far larger between tliera of meadows 
and forest lawns ; the hedges were rich with white 
roses ; and no living creature was to be seen, except- 
ing that in the green church-yard there were cattle 
tranquilly reposing upon the verdant graves, and par- 
ticularly round about the grave of a child whom I had 
tenderly loved, just as I had really beheld them, a lit- 
tle before sunrise, in the same summer, when that child 
died. I gazed upon the well-known scene, and I said 
aloud (as I thought) to myself, " It yet wants much of 
sunrise ; and it is Easter Sunday ; and that is the day 
on which they celebrate the first fruits of resurrection. 
I will walk abroad ; old griefs shall be forgotten to- 
day ; for the air is cool and still, and the hills are high, 
3,nd stretch away to heaven ; and the forest glades are 
as quiet as the church-yard ; and with the dew I can 
wash the fever from my forehead, and then I shall be 
unhappy no longer." And I turned, as if to open my 
garden gate ; and immediately I saw upon the left a 
scene far different ; but which yet the power of dreams 
had reconciled into harmony with the other. The scene 
was an oriental one ; and there also it was Easter Sun- 
day, and very early in the morning. And at a vast 
distance were visible, as a stain upon the horizon, the 
domes and cupolas of a great city — an image or faint 
abstraction, caught, perhaps, in childhood, from some 
picture of Jerusalem. And not a bow-shot from me, 
upon a stone, and shaded by Judean palms, there sat a 
woman ; and I looked, and it was — Ann ! She fixed 
her eyes upon me earnestly ; and I said to her, at length, 
" So, then, I have found you, at last." I waited ; but 
she answered me not a word. Her face was tlie same 



DREAMS. 155 



as when I saw it last, and yet, again, how different ! 
Seventeen years ago, when the lamp-light fell upon her 
face, as for the last time I kissed her lips (lips, Ann, 
that to me were not polluted !), her eyes were stream- 
ing with tears ; — her tears were now wiped away ; she 
seemed more beautiful than she was at that time, but 
in all other points the same, and not older. Her looks 
were tranquil, but with unusual solemnity of expression, 
and I now gazed upon her with some awe ; but sud- 
denly her countenance grew dim, and, turning to the 
mountains, I perceived vapors rolling between us ; in a 
moment, all had vanished ; thick darkness came on ; 
and in the twinkling of an eye I was far away from 
mountains, and by lamp-light in Oxford-street, walking 
again with Ann —just as we walked seventeen years 
before, when we were both children. 

I cite one of a different character, from 1820. 

The dream commenced with a music which now I 
often heard in dreams — a music of preparation and of 
awakening suspense ; a music like the opening of the 
Coronation Anthem, and which, like that, gave the 
feeling of a vast march, of infinite cavalcades filing off, 
and the tread of innumerable armies. The morning 
was come of a mighty day — a day of crisis and of final 
hope for human nature, then suffering some mysterious 
eclipse, and laboring in some dread extremity. Some- 
where, I knew not where — somehow, I knew not how 
by some beings, I knew not whom — a battle, a strife, 
an agony, was conducting, — was evolving like a great 
drama, or piece of music ; with which my sympathy was 
the more insupportable from my confusion as to its 
place, its cause, its nature, and its possible issue. I, 



156 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

as is usual in dreams (where, of necessity, we make 
ourselves central to every movement), had the power, 
and yet had not the power, to decide it. I had the 
power, if I could raise myself, to will it ; and yet again 
had not the power, for the weight of twenty Atlantics 
was upon me, or the oppression of inexpiable guilt. 
" Deeper than ever plummet sounded," I lay inactive. 
Then, like a chorus, the passion deepened. Some 
greater interest was at stake; some mightier cause 
than ever yet the sword had pleaded, or trumpet had 
proclaimed. Then came sudden alarms ; hurryings to 
and fro ; trepidations of innumerable fugitives. I knew 
not whether from the good cause or the bad ; darkness 
and lights ; tempest and human faces ; and at last, 
with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the 
features that were worth all the world to me, and but 
a moment allowed, — and clasped hands, and heart- 
breaking partings, and then — everlasting farewells ! 
and, with a sigh, such as the caves of hell sighed when 
the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of 
death, the sound was reverberated — everlasting fare- 
wells ! and again, and yet again reverberated — ever- 
lasting farewells ! 

And I awoke in struggles, and cried aloud — "I will 
sleep no more !" 



LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OP SORROW. . 

Oftentimes at Oxford I saw Levana in my dreams. 
1 knew her by her Roman symbols. Who is Levana ? 
Reader, that do not pretend to have leisure for very 
much scholarship, you will not be angry with me for 
telling you. Levana was the Roman goddess that per- 
formed for the new-born infant the earliest office of en- 
nobling kindness, — typical, by its mode, of that gran- 
deur which belongs to man everywhere, and of that be- 
nignity in powers invisible which even in Pagan worlds 
sometimes descends to sustain it. At the very moment 
of birth, just as the infant tasted for the first time the 
atmosphere of our troubled planet, it was laid on the 
ground. That might bear different interpretations. 
But immediately, lest so grand a creature should gro- 
vel there for more than one instant, either the paternal 
hand, as proxy for the goddess Levana, or some near 
kinsman, as proxy for the father, raised it upright, 
bade it look erect as the king of all this world, and 
presented its forehead to the stars, saying, perhaps, in 
his heart, " Behold what is greater than yourselves ! " 
This symbolic act represented the function of Levana. 
And that mysterious lady, who never revealed her face 
(except to me in dreams), but always acted by delega- 
tion, had her name from the Latin verb (as still it is 
the Italian verb) levare, to raise aloft. 

This is the explanation of Levana. And hence it 

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158 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

has arisen that some people have understood by Levana 
the tutelary power that controls the education of the 
nursery. She, that would not suffer at his birth even a 
prefigurative or mimic degradation for her awful ward, 
far less could be supposed to suffer the real degradation 
attaching to the non-development of his powers. She 
therefore watches over human education. Now, the 
word ediico, with the penultimate short, was derived 
(by a process often exemplified in the crystallization of 
languages) from the word educo, with the penultimate 
long. Whatsoever educes, or develops, educates. By 
the education of Levana, therefore, is meant, — not the 
poor machinery that moves by spelling-books and gram- 
mars, but by that mighty system of central forces hid- 
den in the deep bosom of human life, which by passion, 
by strife, by temptation, by the energies of resistance, 
works forever upon children, — resting not day or 
night, any more than the mighty wheel of day and night 
themselves, whose moments, like restless spokes, are 
glimmering forever as they revolve. 

If, then, these are the ministries by which Levana 
works, how profoundly must she reverence the agen- 
cies of grief ! But you, reader ! think, — that children 
generally are not liable to grief such as mine. There 
are two senses in the word generally, — the sense of 
Euclid, where it means universally (or in the whole 
extent of the genus), and a foolish sense of this world, 
where it means usually. Now, I am far from saying 
that children universally are capable of grief like mine. 
But there are more than you ever heard of who die of 
grief in this island of ours. I will tell you a common 
case. The rules of Eton require that a boy on the 



LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OP SORROW. 159 

foundation should be there twelve years : he is super- 
annuated at eighteen, consequently he must come at 
six. Children torn away from mothers and sisters at 
that age not unfrequently die. I speak of what I know. 
The complaint is not entered by the registrar as grief ; 
but that it is. Grief of that sort, and at that age, has 
killed more than ever have been counted amongst its 
martyrs. 

Therefore it is that Levana often communes with the 
powers that shake man's heart : therefore it is that she 
dotes upon grief. " These ladies," said I softly to my- 
self, on seeing the ministers with whom Levana was 
conversing, " these are the Sorrows ; and they are three 
in number, as the Graces are three, who dress man's 
life with beauty : the Parcce are three, who weave the 
dark arras of man's life in their mysterious loom al- 
ways with colors sad in part, sometimes angry with 
tragic crimson and black ; the Furies are three, who 
visit with retributions called from the other side of the 
grave offences that walk upon this ; and at once even 
the Muses were but three, who fit the harp, the trum- 
pet, or the lute, to the great burdens of man's impas- 
sioned creations. These are the Sorrows, all three of 
whom I know." The last words I say now ; but in 
Oxford I said, '* one of whom I know, and the others 
too surely I shall know." For already, in my fervent 
youth, I saw (dimly relieved upon the dark back-ground 
of my dreams) the imperfect lineaments of the awful 
sisters. These sisters — by what name shall we call 
them? 

If I say simply, " The Sorrows," there will be a 
chance of mistaking the term ; it might be understood 



160 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

of individual sorrow, — separate cases of sorrow, — 
whereas I want a term expressing the mighty abstrac- 
tions thai incarnate themselves in all individual suffer- 
ings of man's heart ; and I wish to have these abstrac- 
tions presented as impersonations, that is, as clothed 
with human attributes of life, and with functions point- 
ing to flesh. Let us call them, therefore. Our Ladies 
of Sorroiv. I know tliem thoroughly, and have walk- 
ed in all their kingdoms. Three sisters they are, of 
one mysterious household ; and their paths are wide 
apart ; but of their dominion there is no end. Them I 
saw often conversing with Levana, and sometimes about 
myself. Do they talk, then ? 0, No ! Mighty phan- 
toms like these disdain the infirmities of language. 
They may utter voices through the organs of man when 
they dwell in human hearts, but amongst themselves 
is no voice nor sound ; eternal silence reigns in their 
kingdoms. Tlie?/ spoke not, as they talked with Le- 
vana ; the// whispered not ; thei/ sang not ; though of- 
tentimes methought they might have sung : for I upon 
earth had heard their mysteries oftentimes deciphered 
by harp and timbrel, by dulcimer and organ. Like 
God, whose servants they are, they utter their pleasure 
not by sounds that perish, or by words that go astray, 
but by signs in heaven, by changes on earth, by pulses 
in secret rivers, heraldries painted on darkness, and 
hieroglyphics written on the tablets of the brain. The?/ 
wheeled in mazes ; I spelled the steps. Thep tele- 
graphed from afar ; / read the signals. The?/ con- 
spired together ; and on the mirrors of darkness my 
eye traced the plots. Theirs were the symbols ; mine 
are the words. 



LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW. 161 

What is it the sisters are ? What is it that they do ? 
Let me describe their form, and their presence ; if form 
it were that still fluctuated in its outline ; or presence 
it were that forever advanced to the front, or forever 
receded amongst shades. 

The eldest of the three is named Mater Lachry- 
manon, Our Lady of Tears. She it is that night and 
day raves and moans, calling for vanished faces. She 
stood in Rama, where a voice was heard of lamenta- 
tion, — Rachel weeping for her children, and refused 
to be comforted. She it was that stood in Bethlehem 
on the night when Herod's sword swept its nurseries of 
Innocents, and the little feet were stiffened forever, 
which, heard at times as they tottered along floors 
overhead, woke pulses of love in household hearts that 
were not unmarked in heaven. 

Her eyes are sweet and subtile, wild and sleepy, by 
turns ; oftentimes rising to the clouds, oftentimes chal- 
lenging the heavens. She wears a diadem round her 
head. And I knew by childish memories that she could 
go abroad upon the winds, when she heard that sobbing 
of litanies, or the thundering of organs, and when she 
beheld the mustering of summer clouds. This sister, 
the elder, it is that carries keys more than papal at her 
girdle, which open every cottage and every palace. 
She, to my knowledge, sate all last summer by the bed- 
side of the blind beggar, him that so often and so gladly 
I talked with, whose pious daughter, eight years old, 
with the sunny countenance, resisted the temptations 
of play and village mirth to travel all day long on 
dusty roads with her afilicted father. For this did 
God send her a great reward. In the spring-time of 



162 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

the year, and whilst yet her own spring was budding, he 
recalled her to himself. But her blind father mourns 
forever over her ; still he dreams at midnight that the 
little guiding hand is locked within his own ; and still 
he wakens to a darkness that is now within a second 
and a deeper darkness. This Mater Lachrymarum 
also has been sitting all this winter of 184:4-5 within 
the bedchamber of the Czar, bringing before his eyes 
a daughter (not less pious) that vanished to God not 
less suddenly, and left behind her a darkness not less 
profound. By the power of her keys it is that Our 
Lady of Tears glides a ghostly intruder into the cham- 
ber of sleepless men, sleepless women, sleepless chil- 
dren, from Ganges to the Nile, from Nile to Mississippi. 
And her, because she is the first-born of her house, and 
has the widest empire, let us honor with the title of 
" Madonna." 

The second sister is called Mater Suspiriorum, Our 
Lady of Sighs. She never scales the clouds, nor walks 
abroad upon the winds. She wears no diadem. And 
her eyes, if they were ever seen, would be neither 
sweet nor subtile ; no man could read their story; they 
would be found filled with perishing dreams, and with 
wrecks of forgotten delirium. But she raises not her 
eyes ; her head, on which sits a dilapidated turban, 
droops forever, forever fastens on the dust. She weeps 
not. She groans not. But she sighs inaudibly at in- 
tervals. Her sister Madonna is oftentimes stormy and 
frantic, raging in the highest against heaven, and de- 
manding back her darlings. But Our Lady of Sighs 
never clamors, never defies, dreams not of rebellious 
aspirations. She is humble to abjectness. Hers is the 



LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW. 163 

meekness that belongs to the hopeless. Murmur she 
may, but it is in her sleep. Whisper she may, but it 
is to herself in the twilight. Mutter she does at times, 
but it is in solitary places that are desolate as she is 
desolate, in ruined cities, and when the sun has gone 
down to his rest. This sister is the visitor of the Pa- 
riah, of the Jew, of the bondsman to the oar in the 
Mediterranean galleys ; of the English criminal in Nor- 
folk Island, blotted out from the books of remembrance 
in sweet far-ofif England ; of the baffled penitent revert- 
ing his eyes forever upon a solitary grave, which to him 
seems the altar overthrown of some past and bloody 
sacrifice, on which altar no oblations can now be avail- 
ing, whether towards pardon that he might implore, or 
towards reparation that he might attempt. Every slave 
that at noonday looks up to the tropical sun with timid 
reproach, as he points with one hand to the earth, our 
general mother, but for him a step-mother, — as he 
points with the other hand to the Bible, our general 
teacher, but against him sealed and sequestered ; — 
every woman sitting in darkness, without love to shel- 
ter her head, or hope to illumine her solitude, because 
the heaven-born instincts kindling in her nature germs 
of holy affections, which God implanted in her wo- 
manly bosom, having been stifled by social necessities, 
now burn sullenly to waste, like sepulchral lamps 
amongst the ancients ; every nun defrauded of her un- 
returning May-time by wicked kinsman, whom God will 
judge ; every captive in every dungeon ; all that are 
betrayed, and all that are rejected ; outcasts by tradi- 
tionary law, and children of hereditary disgrace, — all 
these walk with Our Lady of Sighs. She also carries 



164 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

a key ; but she needs it little. For her kingdom is 
chiefly amongst the tents of Shem, and the houseless 
vagrant of every clime. Yet in the very highest ranks 
of man she finds chapels of her own ; and even in glo- 
rious England there are some that, to the world, carry 
their heads as proudly as the reindeer, who yet se- 
cretly have received her mark upon their foreheads. 

But the third sister, who is also the youngest ! 

Hush ! whisper whilst we talk of her ! Her kingdom 
is not large, or else no flesh should live ; but within that 
kingdom all power is hers. Her head, turretcd like 
that of Cyb^le, rises almost beyond the reach of sight. 
She droops not ; and her eyes rising so high might be 
hidden by distance. But, being what they are, they 
cannot be hidden ; through the treble veil of crape 
which she wears, the fierce light of a blazing misery, 
that rests not for matins or for vespers, for noon of day 
or noon of night, for ebbing or for flowing tide, may 
be read from the very ground. She is the defier of 
God. She also is the mother of lunacies, and the sug- 
gestress of suicides. Deep lie the roots of her power ; 
but narrow is the nation that she rules. For she can 
approach only those in whom a profound nature has 
been upheaved by central convulsions ; in whom the 
heart trembles and the brain rocks under conspiracies 
of tempest from without and tempest from within. Ma- 
donna moves with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but 
still with tragic grace. Our Lady of Sighs creeps tim- 
idly and stealthily. But this youngest sister moves 
with incalculable motions, bounding, and with a tiger's 
leaps. She carries no key ; for, though coming rarely 
amongst men, she storms all doors at which she is per- 



LEVANA AND OUR LADIES OF SORROW. 165 

mittcd to enter at all. And her name is Mater Tene- 
brarum, — Our Lady of Darkness. 

These were the Seninai Theai, or Sublhne Goddess- 
es,* these were tlie Euinenides, or Gracious Ladies (so 
called by antiquity in shuddering propitiation) of my 
Oxford dreams. Madonna spoke. She spoke by her 
mysterious hand. Touching my head, she beckoned to 
Our Lady of Sighs ; and ivhat she spoke, translated out 
of the signs which (except in dreams) no man reads, 
was this : 

" Lo ! here is he, whom in childhood I dedicated to 
my altars. This is he that once I made my darling. 
Him I led astray, him I beguiled, and from heaven I 
stole away his young heart to mine. Through me did 
he become idolatrous ; and through me it was, by Ian 
guishing desires, that he worshipped the worm, and 
prayed to the wormy grave. Holy was the grave to 
him ; lovely was its darkness ; saintly its corruption. 
Him, this young idolater, I have seasoned for thee dear 
gentle Sister of Sighs ! Do thou take him now to thi/ 
heart, and season him for our dreadful sister. And 
thou," — turning to the Mater Tenebrarum, she said, — 
" wicked sister, that temptest and hatest, do thou take 
him from her. See that thy sceptre lie heavy on his 
head. Suffer not woman and her tenderness to sit near 
him in his darkness. Banish the frailties of hope, 
wither the relenting of love, scorch the fountains of 

*** Sublime Goddesses." — The word cFumg is usually rendered 
venerable in dictionaries ; not a very flattering epithet for females. But 
by weighing a nuiuber of passages in which the word is used pointedly, 
I am disposed to think that it comes nearest to our idea of the sublime, 
as near as a Greek word could come. 



166 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

tears, curse him as only thou canst curse. So shall he 
be accomplished in the furnace, so shall he see the 
things that ought not to be seen, sights that are abom- 
inable, and secrets that are unutterable. So shall he 
read elder truths, sad truths, grand truths, fearful 
truths. So shall he rise again before he dies. And 
so shall our commission be accomplished which from 
God we had, — to plague his heart until we had un- 
folded the capacities of his spirit." 



THE DAUGHTER OF LEBANON. 

Damascus, first-born of cities. Om el Denia, moth- 
er of generations, that wast before Abraham, that wast 
before the Pyramids ! what sounds are those that, from 
a postern gate, looking eastwards over secret paths 
that wind away to the far distant desert, break the 
solemn silence of an oriental night ? Whose voice is 
that which calls upon the spearmen, keeping watch 
forever in the turret surmounting the gate, to receive 
him back into his Syrian home ? Thou knowest him, 
Damascus, and hast known him in seasons of trouble 
as one learned in the afflictions of man ; wise alike to 
take counsel for the suffering spirit or for the suffering 
body. I 

The voice that breaks upon the night is the voice of 
a great evangelist — one of the four; and he is also 
a great physician. This do the watchmen at the gate 
thankfully acknowledge, and joyfully they give him 
entrance. His sandals are white with dust for he has 
been roaming for weeks beyond the desert, under the 
guidance of the Arabs, on missions of hopeful benigni- 
ty to Palmyra ; and in spirit he is weary of all things, 
except faithfulness to God, and burning love to man. 

Eastern cities are asleep betimes ; and sounds few 
or none fretted the quiet of all around him, as the 
evangelist paced onward to the market-place ; but 
there another scene awaited him. On the right hand, 
in an upper chamber, with lattices widely expanded, 

(167) 



168 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

sat a festal company of youths, revelling under a noon- 
day blaze of light, from cressets and from bright tri- 
pods that burned fragrant woods — all joining in choral 
songs, all crowned with odorous wreaths from Daphne 
and the banks of the Orontes. 

Them the evangelist heeded not, but far away upon 
the left, close upon a sheltered nook, lighted up by a 
solitary vase of iron fret-work filled with cedar boughs, 
and hoisted high upon a spear, behold there sat a 
woman of loveliness so transcendent, that, when sud- 
denly revealed, as now, out of deepest darkness, she 
appalled men as a mockery, or a birth of the air. Was 
she born of woman ? Was it perhaps the angel — so 
the evangelist argued with himself — that met him in 
the desert after sunset, and strengthened him with se- 
cret talk ? The evangelist went up and touched her 
forehead : and when he found that she was indeed hu- 
man, and guessed from the station which she had chos- 
en, that she waited for some one amongst this dissolute 
crew as her companion, he groaned heavily in spirit, 
and said, half to himself, but half to her, " Wert thou, 
poor, ruined flower, adorned so divinely at thy birth — 
glorified in such excess, that not Solomon in all his 
pomp, no, nor even the lilies of the field, can approach 
thy gifts — only that thou shouldst grieve the Holy 
Spirit of God ? 

The woman trembled exceedingly and said, " Rabbi, 
what should I do ? For behold ! all men forsake me ! " 
The evangelist mused a little, and then secretly to him- 
self he said, " Now will I search this woman's heart, 
whether in very truth it inclineth itself to God, and 
hath strayed only before fiery compulsion." Turning 



THE DAUGHTER OF LEBANON. 169 

therefore to the woman, the Prophet said, " Listen : 
I am tlie messsenger of Him whom thou hast not 
known ; of Him that made Lebanon, and the cedars 
of Lebanon ; that made the sea, and the heavens, and 
the host of the stars ; that made the light ; that made 
the darkness ; that blew the spirit of life into the 
nostrils of man. His messenger I am : and from him 
all power is given me to bind and to loose, to build and 
to pull down. Ask, therefore, whatsoever thou wilt — 
great or small — and through me thou shalt receive it 
from God. But, my child, ask not amiss. For God is 
able out of thy own evil asking to weave snares for 
thy footing. And oftentimes to the lambs whom he 
loves he gives by seeming to refuse ; gives in some 
better sense, or " (and his voice swelled into the power 
of anthems) " in some far happier world. Now, there- 
fore, my daughter, be wise on thy own behalf, and say 
what it is that I shall ask for thee from God." 

But the daughter of Lebanon needed not his caution ; 
for immediately dropping on one knee to God's anibas^ 
sador, whilst the full radiance from the cedar torch fell 
upon the glory of a penitential eye, she raised her 
clasped hands in supplication, and said, in answer to 
the evangelist asking for a second time what gift he 
should call down upon her froai Heaven, " Lord, that 
thou wouldst put me back into my father's house." 
And the evangelist, because he was human, dropped 
a tear as he stooped to kiss her foreliead, saying, 
" Daughter, tliy prayer is heard in heaven ; and I tell 
thee that the daylight shall not come and go for thirty 
times, not for the thirtieth time shall the sun drop be- 
8 



170 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

bind Lebanon, before I will put thee back into thy 
father's house." 

Thus the lovely lady came into the guardianship of 
the evangelist. She sought not to varnish her history, 
or to palliate her own transgressions. In so far as she 
had offended at all, her case was that of millions in 
every generation. Her father was a prince in Leba- 
non, — proud, unforgiving, austere. The wrongs done 
to his daughter, by her dishonorable lover, because 
done under favor of opportunities created by her con- 
fidence in his integrity, her father persisted in resent- 
ing as wrongs done by this injured daughter herself; 
and, refusing to lier all protection, drove her, whilst 
yet confessedly innocent, into criminal compliances un- 
der sudden necessities of seeking daily bread, from her 
own uninstructed efforts. Great was the wrong she 
suffered both from father and lover ; great was the 
retribution. She lost a churlish father and a wicked 
lover ; she gained an apostolic guardian. Slie lost a 
princely station in Lebanon ; she gained an early heri- 
tage in heaven. For this heritage is hers within thirty 
days, if she will not defeat it herself. And, whilst the 
stealtliy motion of time travelled towards this thirtieth 
day, behold ! a burning fever desolated Damascus, 
which also laid its arrest upon the Daughter of Leba- 
non, yet gently, and so that hardly for an hour did it 
withdraw her from the heavenly teachings of the evan- 
gelist. And thus daily the doubt was strengthened, 
would the holy apostle suddenly touch her with his 
hand and say, " Woman, be thou whole ! " or would 
he present her on the thirtieth day as a pure bride to 



THE DAUGHTER OP LEBANON. 171 

Christ? But perfect freedom belongs to Christian ser- 
vice, and she only must make the election. 

Up rose the sun on the thirtieth morning in all his 
pomp, but suddenly was darkened by driving storms. 
Not until noon was the heavenly orb again revealed ; 
then the glorious light was again unmasked, and again 
the Syrian valleys rejoiced. This was the hour already 
appointed for the baptism of the new Christian daugh- 
ter. Heaven and Earth shed gratulation on the happy 
festival ; and, when all was finished, under an awning 
raised above the level roof of her dwelling house, the 
regenerate daughter of Lebanon, looking over the rose 
gardens of Damascus, with amplest prospect of her 
native hills, lay, in blissful trance, making proclama- 
tion, by her white baptismal robes, of recovered inno- 
cence and of reconciliation with God. And, when the 
sun was declining to the west, the evangelist, who had 
sat from noon by the bedside of his spiritual daughter, 
rose solemnly and said, " Lady of Lebanon, the day is 
already come, and the hour is coming, in w^hich my 
covenant must be fulfilled with thee. Wilt thou, there- 
fore, being now wiser in thy thoughts, suffer God, thy 
new father, to give by seeming to refuse ; to give in 
some better sense, or in some ilir happier world ? " But 
the Daugliter of Lebanon sorrowed at these words ; 
she yearned after her native hills ; not for themselves, 
but because there it was that she had left that sweet 
twin-born sister, with whom from infant days hand-in- 
hand she had wandered amongst the everlasting cedars. 
And again the evangelist sat down by her bedside ; 
whilst she by intervals communed with him, and by in- 



172 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

tcrvals slept gently under the oppression of her fever. 
But as evening drew near, and it wanted now but a 
brief space to the going down of the sun, once again, 
and with deeper solemnity, the evangelist rose to his 
feet and said " Daughter ! this is the thirtieth day, 
and the sun is drawing near to his rest ; brief, there- 
fore, is the time within which I must fulfil the word 
which God spoke to thee by me." Then, because light 
clouds of delirium were playing about her brain, he 
raised his pastoral staff, and, pointing it to her temples, 
rebuked the clouds, and bade that no more they should 
trouble her vision, or stand between her and the for- 
ests of Lebanon. And the delirious clouds parted 
asunder, breaking away to the right and the left. But 
upon the forests of Lebanon there hung a mighty mass 
of overshadowing vapors, bequeathed by the morning's 
storm. And a second time the evangelist raised his 
pastoral staff, and pointing it to the gloomy vapors, re- 
buked them, and bade that no more they should stand 
between his daughter and her father's house. And 
immediately the dark vapors broke away from Leba- 
non to the right and to the left ; and the farewell radi- 
ance of the sun lighted up all the paths that ran be- 
tween the everlasting cedars and her father's palace. 
But vainly the Lady of Lebanon searched every path 
with her eyes for memorials of her sister. And the 
evangelist pitying her sorrow, turned away her eyes to 
the clear blue sky, which the departing vapors had ex- 
posed. And he showed her the peace which was there. 
And then ho said, '' Daughter ! this also is but a 
mask." And immediately for the third time he raised 



THE DAUGHTER OF LEBANON. 173 

his pastoral staff, and pointing it to the fair blue sky, 
he rebuked it, and bade that no more it should stand 
between her and the vision of God. Immediately the 
blue sky parted to the right and to the left, laying bare 
the infinite revelations that can be made visible only to 
dying eyes. And the Daughter of Lebanon said tu the 
evangelist, ^' Father ! what armies are these that I 
see mustering within the infinite chasm ? " And the 
evangelist replied, " these are the armies of Christ, and 
they are mustering to receive some dear human blos- 
som, some first fruits of Christian faith, that shall rise 
this night to Christ from Damascus." 

Suddenly as thus the child of Lebanon gazed upon 
the mighty vision, she saw bending forward from the 
heavenly host, as if in gratulation to herself, the one 
countenance for which she hungered and thirsted. The 
twin sister that should have waited for her in Lebanon, 
had died of grief and was waiting for her in Paradise. 
Immediately in rapture she soared upwards from her 
couch ; immediately in weakness she fell back ; and, 
being caught by the evangelist, she flung her arms 
around his neck, whilst he breathed into her ear his 
final whisper, " Wilt thou now suffer that God should 
give by seeming to refuse ? " "0 yes — yes — yes ! '' 
was the fervent answer from the Daughter of Lebanon. 

Immediately the evangelist gave the signal to the 
heavens, and the heavens gave the signal to the sun ; 
and in one minute after the Daughter of Lebanon had 
fallen back a marble corpse amongst her white baptis- 
mal robes ; the solar orb dropped behind Lebanon ; and 
the evangelist, with eyes glorified by mortal and by 



174 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

immortal tears, rendered thanks to God that had thus 
accomplished the word which he spoke through himself 
to the Magdalen of Lebanon — that not for the thirti- 
eth time should the sun go down behind her native 
hills, before he had put her back into her Father's 
house. 



THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 

What is to be taken as the predominant opinion of 
man, reflective and philosophic, upon sudden death ? 
It is remarkable that, in different conditions of society, 
sudden death has been variously regarded as the con- 
summation of an earthly career most fervently to be 
desired, or, again, as that consummation which is with 
most horror to be deprecated. Caesar the Dictator, 
at his last dinner party (^cosna}, on the very evening 
before his assassination, when the minutes of his earth- 
ly career were numbered, being asked what death, in 
his judgment, might be pronounced the most eligible, 
replied, " That which should be most sudden." On the 
other hand, the divine Litany of our English Church, 
when breathing forth supplications, as if in some repre- 
sentative character for the whole human race prostrate 
before God, places such a death in the very van of 
horrors : — " From lightning and tempest ; from plague, 
pestilence, and famine ; from battle and murder, and 
from SUDDEN death — Good Lord, deliver us^ Sud- 
den death is here made to crown the climax in a grand 
ascent of calamities ; it is ranked among the last of 
curses ; and yet, by the noblest of Romans, it was rank- 
ed as the first of blessings. In that difference, most 
readers will see little more than the essential difference 
between Christianity and Paganism. But this, on con- 
sideration, I doubt. The Christian Church may be 
right in its estimate of sudden death ; and it is a nat- 

(175) 



176 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

ural feeling, though after all it may also be an infirm 
one, to wish for a quiet dismissal from life — as that 
which seems most reconcilable with meditation, with 
penitential retrospects, and with the humilities of fare- 
well prayer. There does not, however, occur to me 
any direct scriptural warrant for this earnest petition 
of the English Litany, unless under a special construc- 
tion of the word *' sudden." It seems a petition — in- 
dulged rather and conceded to human infirmity, than 
exacted from human piety. It is not so much a doc- 
trine built upon the eternities of the Christian system, 
as a plausible opinion built upon special varieties of 
physical temperament. Let that, however, be as it 
may, two remarks suggest themselves as prudent re- 
straints upon a doctrine, which else may wander, and 
has wandered, into an uncharitable superstition. The 
first is this : that many people are likely to exaggerate 
the horror of a sudden death, from the disposition to 
lay a false stress upon words or acts, simply because 
by an accident they have become final words or acts. 
If a man dies, for instance, by some sudden death when 
he happens to be intoxicated, such a death is falsely 
regarded with peculiar horror ; as though the intoxi- 
cation were suddenly exalted into a blasphemy. But 
that is unphilosophic. The man was, or he was not, 
habitually a drunkard. If not, if his intoxication were 
a solitary accident, there can be no reason for allowing 
special emphasis to this act, simply because through 
misfortune it became his final act. Nor, on the other 
hand, if it were no accident, but one of his habitual 
transgressions, will it be the more habitual or the more 
a transgression, because some sudden calamity surpris- 



THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 1T7 

ing him, has caused this habitual transgression to be 
also a final one. Could the man have had any reason 
even dimly to foresee his own sudden death, there 
would have been a new feature in his act of intemper- 
ance — feature of presumption and irreverence, as in 
one that, having known himself drawing near to the 
presence of God, should have suited his demeanor to 
an expectation so awful. But this is no part of the 
case supposed. And the only new element in the man's 
act is not any element of special immorality, but simply 
of special misfortune. 

The other remark has reference to the meaning of 
the word sudden. Very possibly Caesar and the Chris- 
tian Church do not differ in the way supposed ; that 
is, do not differ by any difference of doctrine as be- 
tween Pagan and Christian views of the moral temper 
appropriate to death, but perhaps they are contem- 
plating different cases. Both contemplate a violent 
death, a Biudavaiog — death that is B^aiog, or, in other 
words, death that is brought about, not by internal and 
spontaneous change, but by active force, having its ori- 
gin from without. In this meaning the two authorities 
agree. Thus far they are in harmony. But the differ- 
ence is, that the Roman by the word " sudden" means 
unlingering' ; wheresis the Christian Litany by " sudden 
death" means a death without warning', consequently 
without any available summons to religious preparation. 
The poor mutineer, who kneels down to gather into his 
heart the bullets from twelve firelocks of his pitying 
comrades, dies by a most sudden death in Caesar's sense; 
one shock, one mighty spasm, one (possibly not one) 
groan, and all is over. But in the sense of the Litany, 
8* 



178 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

the mutineer's death is far from sudden ; his offence 
originally, his imprisonment, his trial, the interval be- 
tween his sentence and its execution, having all fur- 
nished him with separate warnings of his fate — having 
all summoned him to meet it with solemn preparation. 

Here at once, in this sharp verbal distinction, we 
comprehend the faithful earnestness with which a holy 
Christian Church pleads on behalf of her poor depart- 
ing children, that God would vouchsafe to them the 
last great privilege and distinction possible on a death- 
bed — viz., the opportunity of untroubled preparation 
for facing this mighty trial. Sudden death, as a mere 
variety in the modes of dying, where death in some 
shape is inevitable, proposes a question of choice which, 
equally in the Roman and the Christian sense, will be 
variously answered according to each man's variety of 
temperament. Meantime, one aspect of sudden death 
there is, one modification, upon which no doubt can 
arise, that of all martyrdoms it is the most agitating — 
viz., where it surprises a man under circumstances 
which offer (or which seem to offer) some hurrying, 
flying, inappreciably minute chance of evading it. Sud- 
den as the danger which it affronts, must be any effort 
by which such an evasion can be accomplished. Even 
that^ even the sickening necessity for hurrying in ex- 
tremity where all hurry seems destined to be vain, even 
that anguish is liable to a hideous exasperation in one 
particular case — viz., where the appeal is made not 
exclusively to the instinct of self-preservation, but to 
the conscience, on behalf of some other life besides 
your own, accidentally thrown upon your protection. 
To fail, to collapse in a service merely your own, might 



THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 179 

seem comparatively venial ; though, in fact, it is far 
from venial. But to fail in a case where Providence 
has suddenly thrown into your hands the final interests 
of another — a fellow-creature shuddering between the 
gates of life and death ; this, to a man of apprehensive 
conscience, would mingle the misery of an atrocious 
criminality with the misery of a bloody calamity. You 
are called upon, by the case supposed, possibly to die ; 
but to die at the very moment when, by any even par- 
tial failure, or effeminate collapse of your energies, you 
will be self-denounced as a murderer. You had but 
the twinkling of an eye for your effort, and that effort 
might have been unavailing ; but to have risen to the 
level of such an effort, would have rescued you, though 
not from dying, yet from dying as a traitor to your final 
and farewell duty. 

The situation here contemplated exposes a dreadful 
ulcer, lurking far down in the depths of human nature. 
It is not that men generally are summoned to face such 
awful trials. But potentially, and in shadowy outline, 
such a trial is moving subterraneously in perhaps all 
men's natures. Upon the secret mirror of our dreams 
such a trial is darkly projected, perhaps, to every one 
of us. That dream, so familiar to childhood, of meet- 
ing a lion, and, through languishing prostration in hope 
and the energies of hope, that constant sequel of lying 
down before the lion, publishes the secret frailty of hu- 
man nature — reveals its deep-seated falsehood to it- 
self — records its abysmal treachery. Perhaps not one 
of us escapes that dream ; perhaps, as by some sorrow- 
ful doom of man, that dream repeats for every one of 
us, through every generation, the original temptation 



180 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

in Eden. Every one of us, in this dream, has a bait 
offered to the infirm places of his own individual will ; 
once again a snare is presented for tempting him into 
captivity to a luxury of ruin ; once again, as in aborig- 
inal Paradise, the man falls by his own choice ; again, 
by infinite iteration, the ancient Earth groans to Heav- 
en, through her secret caves, over the weakness of her 
child : " Nature, from her seat, sighing through all her 
works," again " gives signs of wo that all is lost ; " and 
again the counter sigh is repeated to the sorrowing 
heavens for the endless rebellion against God. It is 
not without probability that in the world of dreams 
every one of us ratifies for himself the original trans- 
gression. In dreams, perhaps under some secret con- 
flict of the midnight sleeper, lighted up to the con- 
sciousness at the time, but darkened to the memory as 
soon as all is finished, each several child of our myste- 
rious race completes for himself the treason of the abo- 
riginal fall. 

The incident, so memorable in itself by its features 
of horror, and so scenical by its grouping for the eye, 
which furnished the text for this reverie upon Sudden 
Death, occurred to myself in the dead of night, as a 
solitary spectator, when seated on the box of the Man- 
chester and Glasgow mail, in the second or third sum- 
mer after Waterloo. I find it necessary to relate the 
circumstances, because they are such as could not have 
occurred unless under a singular combination of acci- 
dents. In those days, the oblique and lateral commu- 
nications with many rural post-offices were so arranged, 
either through necessity or through defect of system, 



THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 181 

as to make it requisite for the main north-western mail 
(t. e,, the doivn mail), on reaching Manchester, to halt 
for a number of hours ; how many, I do not remember ; 
six or seven, I think ; but the result was, that, in the 
ordinary course, the mail recommenced its journey 
northwards about midnight. Wearied with the long 
detention at a gloomy hotel, I walked out about eleven 
o'clock at night for the sake of fresh air ; meaning to 
fall in with the mail and resume my seat at the post- 
office. The night, however, being yet dark, as the 
moon had scarcely risen, and the streets being at that 
hour empty, so as to offer no opportunities for asking 
the road, I lost my way ; and did not reach the post- 
office until it was considerably past midnight ; but, to 
my great relief (as it was important for me to be in 
Westmoreland by the morning), I saw in the huge 
saucer eyes of the mail, blazing through the gloom, an 
evidence that my chance was not yet lost. Past the 
time it was, but, by some rare accident, the mail was 
not even yet ready to start. I ascended to my seat on 
the box, where my cloak was still lying as it had lain 
at the Bridgewater Arms. I had left it there in imi- 
tation of a nautical discoverer, who leaves a bit of bunt- 
ing on the shore of his discovery, by way of warning off 
the ground the whole human race, and notifying to 
the Christian and the heathen worlds, with his best 
compliments, that he has hoisted his pocket-handker- 
chief once and for ever upon that virgin soil ; thence- 
forward claiming the jus dominii to the top of the at- 
mosphere above it, and also the right of driving shafts 
to the centre of the earth below it ; so that all people 
found after this warning, either aloft in upper cham- 



182 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

bers of the atmosphere, or groping in subterraneous 
shafts, or squatting audaciously on the surface of the 
soil, will be treated as trespassers — kicked, that is to 
say, or decapitated, as circumstances may suggest, by 
their very faithful servant, the owner of the said pock- 
et handkerchief. In the present case, it is probable 
that my cloak might not have been respected, and the 
jus gentium might have been cruelly violated in my 
person — for, in the dark, people commit deeds of 
darkness, gas being a great ally of morality — but it so 
happened that, on this night, there was no other out- 
side passenger ; and thus the crime, which else was but 
too probable, missed fire for want of a criminal. 

Having mounted the box, I took a small quantity of 
laudanum, having already travelled two hundred and 
fifty miles — viz., from a point seventy miles beyond 
London. In the taking of laudanum there was noth- 
ing extraordinary. But by accident it drew upon me 
the special attention of my assessor on the box, the 
coachman. And in that also there was nothing extra- 
ordinary. But by accident, and with great delight, it 
drew my own attention to the fact that this coachman 
was a monster in point of bulk, and that he had but 
one eye. In fact, he had been foretold by Virgil as 

" Monstrum herrendum, informe, ingens cui lumen ademptum." 

He answered to the conditions in every one of the 
items : — 1, a monster he was ; 2, dreadful ; 3, shape- 
less ; 4, huge ; 5, who had lost an eye. But why 
should that delight me ? Had he been one of the Cal- 
endars in the " Arabian Nights," and had paid down his 
eye as the price of his criminal curiosity, what right 



THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 183 

had 1 to exult in his misfortune ? I did not exult : I 
delighted in no man's punishment, though it were even 
merited. But these personal distinctions (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 
4, 5) identified in an instant an old friend of mine, 
whom I had known in the south for some years as the 
most masterly of mail-coachmen. He was the man in 
all Europe tliat could (if an?/ could) have driven six- 
in-hand full gallop over Al Sirat — that dreadfid bridge 
of Mahomet, with no side battlements, and of extra 
room not enough for a razor's edge — leading right 
across the bottomless gulf. Under this eminent man, 
whom in Greek I cognominated Cyclops diphr elates 
(Cyclops the charioteer), I, and others known to me, 
studied the diphrelatic art. Excuse, reader, a word 
too elegant to be pedantic. As a pupil, though I paid 
extra fees, it is to be lamented tliat I did not stand 
high in his esteem. It showed his dogged honesty 
(though, observe, not his discernment), that he could 
not see my merits. Let us excuse his absurdity in this 
particular, by remembering his want of an eye. Doubt- 
less that made him blind to my merits. In the art of 
conversation, however, he admitted that I had the whip- 
hand of him. On this present occasion, great joy was 
at our meeting. But what was Cyclops doing here ? 
Had the medical men recommended northern air, or 
how ? I collected, from such explanations as he vol- 
unteered, that he had an interest at stake in some suit- 
at4aw now pending at Lancaster ; so that probably he 
had got himself transferred to this station, for the pur- 
pose of connecting with his professional pursuits an in- 
stant readiness for the calls of his lawsuit. 

Meantime, what are we stopping for ? Surely we 



184 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

have now waited long enough. Oh, this procrastina- 
ting mail, and this procrastinating post-office ! Can't 
they take a lesson upon that subject from me ? Some 
people have called me procrastinating. Yet you are 
witness, reader, that I was kept here waiting for the 
post-office. Will the post-office lay its hand on its 
heart, in its moments of sobriety, and assert that ever 
it waited for me ? What are they about ? The guard 
tells me that there is a large extra accumulation of for- 
eign mails this night, owing to irregularities caused by 
war, by wind, by weather, in the packet service, which 
as yet does not benefit at all by steam. For an extra 
hour, it seems, the post-office has been engaged in 
threshing out the pure wheatcu correspondence of Glas- 
gow, and winnowing it from the chaff of all baser in- 
termediate towns. But at last all is finished. Sound 
your horn, guard. Manchester, good-by ; we've lost 
an hour by your criminal conduct at the post-office : 
which, however, though I do not mean to part with a 
serviceable ground of complaint, and one which really 
is such for the horses, to me secretly is an advantage, 
since it compels us to look sharply for this lost hour 
amongst the next eight or nine, and to recover it (if 
we can) at the rate of one mile extra per hour. Off 
we are at last, and at eleven miles per hour : and for 
the moment I detect no changes in the energy or in the 
skill of Cyclops. 

From Manchester to Kendal, which virtually (though 
not in law) is the capital of Westmoreland, there were 
at this time seven stages of eleven miles each. The 
first five of these, counting from Manchester, terminate 
in Lancaster, which is therefore fifty-five miles north 



THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 185 

of Manhcester, and the same distance exactly from 
Liverpool. The first three stages terminate in Preston 
(called, by way of distinction from other towns of that 
name, provd Preston), at which place it is that the 
separate roads from Liverpool and from Manchester to 
the north become confluent. Within these first three 
stages lay the foundation, the progress, and termina- 
tion of our night's adventure. During the first stage, 
I found out that Cyclops was mortal : he was liable to 
the shocking affection of sleep — a thing which pre- 
viously I had never suspected. If a man indulges in 
the vicious habit of sleeping, all the skill in aurigation 
of Apollo himself, with the horses of Aurora to exe- 
cute his notions, avail him nothing. " Oh, Cyclops ! " 
T exclaimed, " thou art mortal. My friend thou snor- 
est." Through the first eleven miles, however, this 
infirmity — which I grieve to say that he shared with 
the whole Pagan Pantheon — betraye 1 itself only by 
brief snatches. On waking up, he made an apology 
for himself, which, instead of mending matters, laid 
open a gloomy vista of coming disasters. The sum- 
mer assizes, he reminded me, were now going on at 
Lancaster : in consequence of which, for three nights 
and three days, he had not lain down in a bed. Dur- 
ing the day, he was waiting for his own summons as a 
witness on the trial in which he was interested : or 
else, lest he should be missing at the critical moment, 
was drinking with the other witnesses, under the pas- 
toral surveillance of the attorneys. During the night, 
or that part of it which at sea would form the middle 
watch, he was driving. This explanation certainly 
accounted for his drowsiness, but in a way which made 



186 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

it much more alarming ; since now after several days' 
resistance to this infirmity, at length he was steadily 
giving way. Throughout the second stage he grew 
more and more drowsy. In the second mile of the 
third stage, he surrendered hiaiself finally and witliout 
a struggle to his perilous temptation. All his past 
resistance had but deepened the weight of this final 
oppression. Seven atmospheres of sleep rested upon 
him ; and to consummate the case, our worthy guard, 
after singing " Love amongst the Roses " for perhaps 
thirty times, without invitation, and without applause, 
had in revenge moodily resigned himself to slumber — 
not so deep, doubtless, as the coachman's, but deep 
enough for mischief. And thus at last, about ten miles 
from Preston, it came about that I found myself left in 
charge of his Majesty's London and Glasgow mail, then 
running at the least twelve miles an hour. 

What made this negligence less criminal than else it 
must have been thought, was the condition of the 
roads at night during the assizes. At that time, all 
the law business of populous Liverpool, and also of 
populous Manchester, with its vast cincture of popu 
lous rural districts, was called up by ancient usage to 
the tribunal of Lilliputian Lancaster. To break up 
this old traditional usage required, 1, a conflict with 
powerful established interests ; 2, a large system of 
new arrangments ; and 3, a new parliamentary statute. 
But as yet this change was merely in contemplation. 
As things were at present, twice in the year so vast a 
body of business rolled northwards, from the southern 
quarter of the county, that for a fortnight at least it 
occupied the severe exertions of two judges in its de- 



THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 187 

spatch. The consequence of this was, that every horse 
available for such a service, along the whole line of 
road, was exhausted in carrying down the multitudes 
of people who were parties to the different suits. By 
sunset, therefore, it usually happened that, through 
utter exhaustion amongst men and horses, the roads 
sank into profound silence. Except the exhaustion in 
the vast adjacent county of York from a contested 
election, no such silence succeeding to no such fiery up- 
roar was ever witnessed in England. 

On this occasion, the usual silence and solitude pre- 
vailed along the road. Not a hoof nor a wheel was to 
be heard. And to strengthen this false luxurious con- 
fidence in the noiseless roads, it happened also that 
the night was one of peculiar solemnity and peace. 
For my own part, though slightly alive to the possibili- 
ties of peril, I had so far yielded to the influence of 
the mighty calm as to sink into a profound reverie. 
The month was August, in the middle of which lay my 
own birth-day — a festival to every thoughtful man 
suggesting solemn and often sigh-born thoughts. The 
county was my own native county — upon which, in its 
southern section, more than upon any equal area known 
to man past or present, had descended the original curse 
of labor in its heaviest form, not mastering the bodies 
only of men as of slaves, or criminals in mines, but 
working through the firey will. Upon no equal space 
of earth was, or ever had been, the same energy of 
human power put forth daily. At this particular season 
also of the assizes, that dreadful hurricane of flight and 
pursuit, as it might have seemed to a stranger, which 
swept to and from Lancaster all day long, hunting the 



188 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

county up and down, and regularly subsiding back into 
silence about sunset, could not fail (when united with 
this permanent distinction of Lancashire as the very 
metropolis and citadel of labor) to point the thoughts 
pathetically upon that counter vision of rest, of saintly 
repose from strife and sorrow, towards which, as to 
their secret haven, the profounder aspirations of man's 
heart are in solitude continually travelling. Obliquely 
upon our left we were nearing the sea, which also must, 
under the present circumstances, be repeating the gene- 
ral state of halcyon repose. The sea, the atmosphere, 
the light, bore each an orchestral part in this universal 
lull. Moonlight, and the first timid tremblings of the 
dawn, were by this time blending ; and the blendings 
were brought into a still more exquisite state of unity 
by a slight silvery mist, motionless and dreamy, that 
covered the woods and fields, but with a veil of equable 
transparency. Except the feet of our own horses, 
which, running on a sandy margin of the road, made 
but little disturbance, there was no sound abroad. In 
the clouds, and on the earth, prevailed the same ma- 
jestic peace ; and in spite of all that the villain of a 
school-master has done for the ruin of our sublimer 
thoughts, which are the thoughts of our infancy, we 
still believe in no such nonsense as a limited atmosphere. 
Whatever we may swear with our false feigning lips, in 
our faithful hearts we still believe, and must forever be- 
lieve, in fields of air traversing the total gulf between 
earth and the central heavens. Still in the confidence 
of children tliat tread without fear every chamber in 
their father's house, and to whom no door is closed, we, 
in that Sabbatic vision which sometimes is revealed for 



THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 189 

an hour upon nights like this, ascend with easy steps 
from the sorrow-stricken fields of earth, upwards to the 
sandals of God. 

Suddenly, from thoughts like these, I was awakened 
to a sullen sound, as of some motion on the distant road. 
It stole upon the air for a moment ; I listened in awe ; 
but then it died away. Once roused, however, I could 
not but observe with alarm the quickened motion of 
our horses. Ten years' experience had made my eye 
learned in the valuing of motion ; and I saw that we 
were now running thirteen miles an hour. I pretend 
to no presence of mind. On the contrary, my fear is, 
that I am miserably and shamefully deficient in that 
quality as regards action. The palsy of doubt and dis- 
traction hangs like some guilty w^eight of dark un- 
fathomed remembrances upon my energies, when the 
signal is flying for action. But, on the other hand, this 
accursed gift I have, as regards thovght, that in the 
first step towards the possibility of a misfortune, I see 
its total evolution ; in the radix of the series I see too 
certainly and too instantly its entire expansion ; in the 
first syllable of the dreadful sentence, I read already 
the last. It was not that I feared for ourselves. Us. 
our bulk and impetus charmed against peril in any 
collision. And I had ridden through too many hun- 
dreds of perils that were frightful to approach, that 
were matter of laughter to look back upon, the first 
face of which was horror — the parting face a jest, for 
any anxiety to rest upon onr interests. The mail was 
not built, I felt assured, nor bespoke, that could betray 
me who trusted to its protection. But any carriage 
that we could meet would be frail and light in compari* 



190 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

son of ourselves. And I remark this ominous accident 
of our situation. We were on the wrong side of the 
road. But then, it may be said, the other party, if 
other there was, might also be on the wrong side ; 
and two wrongs might make a right. That was not 
likely. The same motive which had drawn us to 
the right-hand side of the road — viz., the luxury of 
the soft beaten sand, as contrasted with the paved centre 
— would prove attractive to others. The two adverse 
carriages would therefore, to a certainty, be travelling 
on the same side ; and from this side, as not being ours 
in law, the crossing over to the other would, of course, 
be looked for from us. Our lamps, still lighted, would 
give the impression of vigilance on our part. And 
every creature that met us, would rely upon us for quar- 
tering. All this, and if the separate links of the antici- 
pation had been a thousand times more, I saw, not dis- 
cursively, or by effort, or by succession, but by one flash 
of horrid simultaneous intuition. 

Under this steady though rapid anticipation of the 
evil which might be gathering ahead, ah ! what a sullen 
mystery of fear, what a sigh of wo, was that which 
stole upon the air, as again the far-off sound of a wheel 
was heard ? A whisper it was — a whisper from, per- 
haps, four miles off — secretly announcing a ruin that 
being foreseen, was not the less inevitable ; that, being 
known, was not, therefore, healed. What could be 
done — who was it that could do it — to check the 
storm-flight of these maniacal horses ? Could I not seize 
the reins from the grasp of the slumbering coachman ? 
You, reader, think that it would have been in ijour power 
to do so. And I quarrel not with your estimate of your- 



THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 191 

self. But, from the way in which ttie coachman's 
hand was viced between his upper and lower thigh, this 
was impossible. Easy, was it ? See, then, that bronze 
equestrian statue. The cruel rider has kept the bit in 
his horse's mouth for two centuries. Unbridle him, for 
a minute, if you please, and wash his mouth with water. 
Easy, was it ? Unhorse me, then, that imperial rider ; 
knock me those marble feet from tliose marble stirrups 
of Charlemagne. 

The sounds ahead strengthened, and were now too 
clearly the sounds of wheels. Who and what could it 
be ? Was it industry in a taxed cart ? Was it youth- 
ful gayety in a gig ? Was it sorrow that loitered, or 
joy that raced ? For as yet the snatches of sound 
were too intermitting, from distance, to decipher the 
character of the motion. Whoever were the travellers, 
something must be done to warn them. Upon the other 
party rests the active responsibility, but upon us — and, 
wo is me ! that us was reduced to my frail opium-shat- 
tered self — rests the responsibility of warning. Yet 
how should this be accomplished ? Might I not sound 
the guard's horn ? Already, on the first thought, I was 
making my way over the roof to tlie guard's seat. But 
this, from the accident which I have mentioned, of the 
foreign mails' being piled upon the roof, was a difficult 
and even dangerous attempt to one cramped by nearly 
three hundred miles of outside travelling. And, for- 
tunately, before I had lost much time in the attempt, 
our frantic horses swept around an angle of the road, 
which opened upon us that final stage where the collis- 
ion must be accomplished, and the catastrophe sealed. 
Ail was apparently finished. The court was sitting ; 



192 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

the case was heard ; the judge had finished ; and the 
only verdict was yet in arrear. 

Before us lay an avenue, straight as an arrow, six 
hundred yards, perhaps, in length ; and the umbrageous 
trees, which rose in a regular line from either side, 
meeting high overhead, gave to it the character of a 
cathedral aisle. These trees lent a deeper solemnity 
to the early light ; but there was still liglit enough to 
perceive, at the further end of this Gothic aisle, a frail 
reedy gig, in which were seated a young man, and by 
his side a young lady. Ah, young sir ! wliat are you 
about ? If it is requisite that you should whisper your 
communications to this young lady — though really I 
see nobody, at an hour and on a road so solitary, likely 
to overhear you — is it therefore requisite that you 
should carry your lips forward to hers ? The little 
carriage is creeping on at one mile an hour ; and the 
parties within it being thus tenderly engaged, are natu- 
rally bending down their heads. Between them and 
eternity, to all human calculation, there is but a minute 
and a-half. Oh heavens ! what is it that I shall do ? 
Speaking or acting, what help can I offer ? Strange it is, 
and to a mere auditor of the tale might seem laughable, 
that I should need a suggestion from the " Iliad " to 
prompt the sole resource that remained. Yet so it was. 
Suddenly I remembered the shout of Achilles, and its 
effect. But could I pretend to shout like the son of 
Peleus, aided by Pallas ? No : but then I needed not 
the shout that should alarm all Asia militant ; such a 
shout would suffice as might carry terror into the hearts 
of two thoughtless young people, and one gig horse. I 
shouted — and the young man hear J me not. A second 



THE VISION OP SUDDEN DEATH. 193 

time I shouted — and now he heard me, for now he 
raised his head. 

Here, then, all had been done that, by me, could be 
done : more on my part was not possible. Mine had 
been the first step ; the second was for the young man; 
the third was for God. If, said I, this stranger is a 
brave man, and if, indeed, he loves the young girl at 
his side — or, loving her not, if he feels the obligation, 
pressing upon every man worthy to be called a man, of 
doing his utmost for a woman confided to his protection 
— he will, at least, make some effort to save her. If 
that fails, he will not perish the more, or by a death 
more cruel, for having made it ; and he will die as a 
brave man should, with his face to the danger, and with 
his arm about the woman that he sought in vain to save. 
But, if he makes no effort, shrinking, without a struggle, 
from his duty, he himself will not the less certainly 
perish for this baseness of poltroonery. He will die 
no less : and why not ? Wherefore should we grieve 
that there is one craven less in the world ? No ; let 
him perish, without a pitying thought of ours wasted 
upon him ; and, in that case, all our grief will be re- 
served for the fate of the helpless girl who now, upon 
the least shadow of failure in him, must, by the fiercest 
of translations — must, without time for a prayer — 
must, within seventy seconds, stand before the judgment 
seat of God. 

But craven he was not : sudden had been the call 
upon him, and sudden was his answer to the call. He 
saw, he heard, he comprehended, the ruin that was 
coming down : already its gloomy shadow darkened 
above him ; and already he was measuring his strength. 
9 



194 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

to deal with it. Ah ! what a vulgar thing does courage 
seem, when we see nations buying it and selling it for 
a shilling a day : ah ! what a sublime thing does cour- 
age seem, when some fearful summons on the great 
deeps of life carries a man, as if running before a hur- 
ricane, up to the giddy crest of some tumultuous crisis, 
from which lie two courses, and a voice says to him au- 
dibly, " One way lies hope ; take the other, and mourn 
for ever ! " How grand a triumph, if, even then, amidst 
the raving of all around him, and the frenzy of the 
danger, the man is able to confront his situation — is 
able to retire for a moment into solitude with God, and 
to seek his counsel from him ! 

For seven seconds, it might be, of his seventy, the 
stranger settled liis countenance steadfastly upon us, as 
if to search and value every element in the conflict be- 
fore him. For five seconds more of his seventy he sat 
immovably, like one that mused on some great purpose. 
For five more, perhaps, he sat with eyes upraised, like 
one that prayed in sorrow, under some extremity of 
doubt, for light that should guide him to the better 
choice. Then suddenly he rose ; stood upright ; and 
by a powerful strain upon the reins, raising his horse's 
fore-feet from the ground, he slewed him round on the 
pivot of his hind-legs, so as to plant the little equipage 
in a position nearly at right angles to ours. Thus far 
his condition was not improved, except as a first step 
had been taken towards the possibility of a second. If 
no more were done, nothing was done ; for the little 
carriage still occupied the very centre of our path, 
though in an altered direction. Yet even now it may 
not be too late : fifteen of the seventy seconds may still 



THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 195 

be unexhausted ; and one almighty bound may avail to 
clear the ground. Hurry, then, hurry ! for the flying 
moments — they hurry ! Oh, hurry, hurry, my brave 
young man ! for the cruel hoofs of our horses — they 
also hurry ! Fast are the flying moments, faster are the 
hoofs of our horses. But fear not for lum^ if human 
energy can suffice ; faithful was he' that drove to his 
terrific duty ; faithful was the horse to his command. 
One blow, one impulse given with voice and hand, by 
the stranger, one rush from the horse, one bound as if 
in the act of rising to a fence, landed the docile crea- 
ture's fore-feet upon the crown or arching centre of 
the road. The larger half of the little equipage had 
then cleared our overtowering shadow : that was evi- 
dent even to my own agitated sight. But it matter- 
ed little that one wreck should float off in safety, if 
upon the wreck that perished were embarked the human 
freightage. The rear part of the carriage — was that 
certainly beyond the line of absolute ruin ? What 
power could answer the question ? Glance of eye, 
thought of man, wing of angel, which of these had 
speed enough to sweep between the question and the 
answer, and divide the one from the other? Light 
does not tread upon the steps of light more in di visibly, 
than did our all-conquering arrival upon the escaping 
eff'orts of the gig. That must the young man have felt 
too plainly. His back was now turned to us ; not by 
siglit could he any longer communicate with the peril ; 
but by the dreadful rattle of our harness, too truly had 
his car been instructed — that all was finished as regard- 
ed any further effort of his. Already in resignation he 
had rested from his struggle ; and perhaps in his heart 



196 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

he was whispering, " Father, which art in heaven, do 
thou finish above what I on earth have attempted." 
Faster than ever mill-race we ran past them in our inex- 
orable flight. Oh, raving of hurricanes that must have 
sounded in their young ears at the moment of our 
transit ! Even in that moment the thunder of collision 
spoke aloud. Either with the swingle-bar, or with the 
haunch of our near leader, we had struck tlie off-wheel 
of the little gig, which stood rather obliquely, and not 
quite so far advanced, as to be accurately parallel with the 
near-wheel. The blow, from the fury of our passage, 
resounded terrifically. I rose in horror, to gaze upon 
the ruins we might have caused. From my elevated 
station I looked down and back upon the scene, which 
in a moment told its own tale, and wrote all its records 
on my heart for ever. 

Here was the map of the passion that now had finish- 
ed. The horse was planted immovably, with his fore- 
feet upon the paved crest of the central road. He of 
the whole party might be supposed untouched by the 
passion of death. The little cany carriage — partly, 
perhaps, from the violent torsion of the wheels in its 
recent movement, partly from the thundering blow we 
had given to it — as if it sympathized with human 
horror, was all alive with tremblings and shiverings. 
The young man trembled not, nor shivered. He sat 
like a rock. But his was the steadiness of agitation 
frozen into rest by horror. As yet he dared not to look 
round ; for he knew that, if anything remained to do, 
by him it could no longer be done. And as yet he 
knew not for certain if their safety were accomplished. 
But the ladv 



THE VISION OF SUDDEN DEATH. 197 

But the lady ! Oh, heavens ! will that spectacle 

ever depart from my dreams, as she rose and sank upon 
her seat, sank and rose, threw up her arms wildly to 
heaven, clutched at some visionary object in the air, 
fainting, praying, raving, desparing ? Fio-ure to your- 
self, reader, the elements of the case ; suffer me to recall 
before your mind the circumstances of that unparalleled 
situation. From the silence and deep peace of this 
saintly summer night — from the pathetic blending of 
this sweet moonlight, dawnlight, dreamlight — from the 
manly tenderness of this flattering, whispering, mur- 
muring love — suddenly as from the woods and fields 
— suddenly as from the chambers of the air opening in 
revelation — suddenly as from the ground yawning at 
her feet, leaped upon her, with the flashing of cataracts, 
Death the crowned phantom, with all the equipage of 
his terrors, and the tiger roar of his voice. 

The moments were numbered ; the strife was finished ; 
the vision was closed. In the twinkling of an eye, our 
flying horses had carried us to the termination of the 
umbrageous aisle ; at right angles we wheeled into our 
former direction ; the turn of the road carried the scene 
out of my eyes in an instant, and swept it into my 
dreams for ever. 



DREAM-FUGUE. 

FOPNDED ON THE PRECEDING THEME OF SUDDEN DEATH. 

" Whence the sound 
Of instruments, that made melodious chime, 
Was heard, of harp and organ ; and who moved 
Their stops and chords, was seen ; his volant touch 
Instinct through all proportions, low and high, 
Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue." 

Paradise Lost, B. xi. 

TamuUuosissimamente. 

Passion of sudden death ! that once in youth I read 
and interpreted by the shadows of thy averted signs ! 
— raptuie of panic taking the shape (which amongst 
tombs in cimrches I have seen) of woman bursting her 
sepulchral bonds — of woman's Ionic form bending from 
the ruins of her grave with arching foot, with eyes up- 
raised, with clasped adoring hands — waiting, watching, 
trembling, praying for the trumpet's call to rise from 
dust for ever ! Ah, vision too fearful of shuddering 
humanity on the brink of almighty abysses! — vision 
that didst start back, that didst reel away, like a shriv- 
elling scroll from before the wrath of hre racing on the 
wings of the wind ! Epilepsy so brief of horror, 
wherefore is it that thou canst not die ? Passing so 
suddenly into darkness, wherefore is it that still thou 
sheddest thy sad funeral blights upon the gorgeous mo- 
saics of dreams ? Fragment of music too passionate, 
heard once, and heard no more, what aileth thee, that 
(198) 



DREAM-FUGUE. 199 

thy deep rolling chords come up at intervals through all 
the worlds of sleep, and after fortj jears, have lost no 
element of horror ? 

I. 

Lo, it is summer — almighty summer ! The ever- 
lasting gates of life and summer are throw open wide ; 
and on the ocean, tranquil and verdant as a savannah, 
the unknown lady from the dreadful vision and I my- 
self are floating — she upon a fiery pinnace, and I upon 
an English three-decker. Both of us are wooing gales 
of festal happiness within the domain of our common 
country, within that ancient watery park, within that 
pathless chase of ocean, where England takes her 
pleasure as a huntress through winter and summer, from 
the rising to the setting sun. Ah, what a wilderness of 
floral beauty was hidden, or was suddenly revealed, 
upon the tropic islands through which the pinnace 
moved ! And upon her deck what a bevy of human 
flowers — young women how lovely, young men how 
noble, that were dancing together, and slowly drifting 
towards us amidst music and incense, amidst blossoms 
from forests and gorgeous corymbi from vintages, amidst 
natural carolling and the echoes of sweet girlish laugh- 
ter. Slowly the pinnace nears us, gaily she hails us, 
and silently she disappears beneath the shadow of our 
mighty bows. But then, as at some signal from heaven, 
the music, and the carols, and the sweet echoing of 
girlish laughter — all are hushed. What evil has smit- 
ten the pinnace, meeting or overtaking her ? Did ruin 
to our friends couch within our own dreadful shadow ? 
Was our shadow the shadow of death ? I looked over 



200 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

the bow for an answer, and behold ! the pinnace was 
dismantled ; the revel and the revellers were found no 
more ; the glory of the vintage was dust ; and the for- 
ests witli their beauty were left without a witness upon 
the seas. " But where," and I turned to our crew — 
" where are the lovely women that danced beneath the 
awning of flowers and clustering corynibi ! Whither 
have fled the noble young men that danced with them ? " 
Answer there was none. But suddenly the man at the 
masthead, whose countenance darkened with alarm, 
cried out, " Sail on the weather beam ! Down she comes 
upon us : in seventy seconds she also will founder." 

II. 
I looked to the weather side, and the summer had 
departed. The sea was rocking, and shaken with 
gathering wrath. Upon its surface sat mighty mists, 
which grouped themselves into arches and long cathe- 
dral aisles. Down one of these, with the fiery pace of 
a quarrel from a cross-bow, ran a frigate right athwart 
our course. " Are they mad ? " some voice exclaimed 
from our deck. " Do they woo their ruin ? " But in 
a moment, she was close upon us, some impulse of a 
heady current or local vortex gave a wheeling bias to 
her course, and off she forged without a shock. As she 
ran past us, high aloft amongst the shrouds stood the 
lady of the pinnace. The deeps opened ahead in malice 
to receive her, towering surges of foam ran after her, 
the billows were fierce to catch her. But far away she 
was borne into desert spaces of the sea : whilst still by 
sight I followed her as she ran before the howling gale, 
chased by angry sea-birds and by maddening billows ; 



DREAM-FUGUE. 201 

still I saw her, as at the moment when she ran past 
us, standing amongst the shrouds, with her white drape- 
ries streaming before the wind. There she stood, with 
hair dishevelled, one hand clutched amongst the tack- 
ling — rising, sinking, fluttering, trembling, praying — 
there for leagues I saw her as she stood, raising at in- 
tervals one hand to heaven, amidst the fiery crests of the 
pursuing waves and the raving of the storm ; until at 
last, upon a sound from afar of malicious laughter and 
mockery, all was hidden for ever in driving showers ; 
and afterwards, but when I know not, nor how. 

m. 

Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable distance, 
wailing over the dead that die before the dawn, awak- 
ened me as I slept in a boat moored to some familiar 
shore. The morning twilight even then was breaking ; 
and, by the dusky revelations which it spread, I saw a 
girl, adorned with a garland of white roses about her 
head for some great festival, running along the solitary 
strand in extremity of haste. Her running was the 
running of panic ; and often she looked back as to 
some dreadful enemy in the rear. But when I leaped 
ashore, and followed on her steps to warn her of a peril 
in front, alas ! from me she fled as from another peril, 
and vainly I shouted to her of quicksands that lay 
ahead. Faster and faster she ran ; round a promontory 
of rocks she wheeled out of sight ; in an instant I also 
wheeled round it, but only to see the treacherous sands 
gathering above her head. Already her person was 
buried ; only the fair young head and the diadem of 
white roses around it were still visible to the pitying 
9* 



202 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

heavens : and, last of all, was visible one white marble 
arm. I saw by the early twilight this fair young head, 
as it was sinking down to darkness — saw this marble 
arm, as it rose above her head and her treacherous grave, 
tossing, faltering, rising, clutching as at some false de- 
ceiving hand stretched out from the clouds — saw this 
marble arm uttering her dying hope, and then uttering 
her dying despair. The head, the diadem, the arm — 
these all had sunk ; at last over these also the cruel 
quicksand had closed ; and no memorial of the fair 
young girl remained on earth, except my own solitary 
tears and the funeral bells from the desert seas, that, 
rising again more softly, sang a requiem over the grave 
of the buried child, and over her blighted dawn. 

I sat, and wept in secret the tears that men have 
ever given to the memory of those that died before the 
dawn, and by the treachery of earth, our mother. But 
suddenly the tears and funeral bells were hushed by a 
shout as of many nations, and by a roar as from some 
great king's artillery, advancing rapidly along the val- 
leys, and heard afar by echoes from the mountains. 
" Hush ! " I said, as I bent my ear earthwards to listen 
— " hush ! — this either is the very anarchy of strife, 
or else " — and then I listened more profoundly, and 
whispered as I raised my head — " or else, oh heavens ! 
it is victory that is final, victory that swallows up all 
strife." 

IV. 

Immediately, in trance, I was carried over land and 
sea to some distant kingdom, and placed upon a tri- 
umphal car, amongst companions crowned with laurel. 



DREAM-FUGUE. 203 

The darkness of gathering midnight, brooding over all the 
land, hid from us the mighty crowds that were weaving 
restlessly about ourselves as a centre : we heard them, 
but saw them not. Tidings had arrived, within an hour, 
of a grandeur that measured itself against centuries ; too 
full of pathos they were, too full of joy, to utter them- 
selves by otlier language than by tears, by restless an- 
thems, and Te Deums reverberated from the choirs and 
orchestras of earth. These tidings we that sat upon the 
laurelled car had it for our privilege to publish amongst 
all nations. And already, by signs audible through the 
darkness, by snortings and tramplings, our angry 
horses, that knew no fear of fleshy weariness, upbraided 
us with delay. Wherefore was it that we delayed ? 
We waited for a secret word that should bear witness 
to the hope of nations, as now accomplished for ever. 
At midnight the secret word arrived ; which word was 
— Waterloo and Recovered Christendom ! The dread- 
ful word shone by its own light ; before us it went ; 
high above our leaders' heads it rode, and spread a 
golden light over the paths which we traversed. Every 
city, at the presence of the secret word, threw open its 
gates. The rivers were conscious as we crossed. All 
the forests, as we ran along their margins, shivered in 
homage to the secret word. And the darkness com- 
prehended it. 

Two hours after midnight we approached a mighty 
Minster. Its gates, which rose to the clouds, were 
closed. But when the dreadful word, that rode before 
us, reached them with its golden light, silently they 
moved back upon their hinges ; and at a flying gallop 
our equipage entered the grand aisle of the cathedral 



204 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

Headlong was our pace ; and at every altar, in the lit- 
tle chapels and oratories to the right hand and left of 
our course, the lamps, dying or sickening, kindled anew 
in sympathy with the secret word that was flying past. 
Forty leagues we might have run in the cathedral, and 
as yet no strength of morning light had reached us, 
when before us we saw the aerial galleries of organ and 
choir. Every pinnacle of the fretwork, every station 
of advantage amongst the traceries, was crested by 
white-robed choristers, that sang deliverance ; that wept 
no more tears, as once their fathers had wept ; but at 
intervals that sang together to the generations, saying, 

*' Chant the deliverer's praise in every tongue," 

and receiving answers from afar, 

* Such as once in heaven and earth were sung." 

And of their chanting was no end ; of our headlong 
pace was neither pause nor slackening. 

Thus, as we ran like torrents — thus, as we swept 
with bridal rapture over the Campo Santo of the cath- 
edral graves — suddenly we became aware of a vast 
necropolis rising upon the far-off horizon — a city of 
sepulchres, built within the saintly cathedral for the 
warrior dead that rested from their feuds on earth. Of 
purple granite was the necropolis ; yet. in the first 
minute, it lay like a purple stain upon tl e horizon, so 
mighty was the distance. In the second minute it 
trembled through many changes, growing into terraces 
and towers of wondrous altitude, so mighty was the 
pace. In the third minute already, with our dreadful 
gallop, we were entering its suburbs. Yast sarcophagi 
rose on every side, having towers and turrets that, 
upon the limits of the central aisle, strode forward with 



DREAM-FUGUE. 205 

haughty intrusion, that ran back with mighty shadows 
into answering recesses. Every sarcophagus showed 
many bas-reliefs — bas-reliefs of battles and of battle- 
fields ; battles from forgotten ages — battles from yes- 
terday—battle-fields that, long since, nature had heal- 
ed and reconciled to herself with the sweet oblivion of 
flowers— battle-fields that were yet angry and crimson 
with carnage. Where the terraces ran, there did we 
run ; where the towers curved, there did we curve. 
With the flight of swallows our horses swept round 
every angle. Like rivers in flood, wheeling round 
headlands — like hurricanes that ride into the secrets 
of forests — faster than ever light unwove the mazes of 
darkness, our flying equipage carried earthly passions, 
kindled warrior instincts, amongst the dust that lay 
around us — dust oftentimes of our noble fathers tha*t 
had slept in God from Creci to Trafalgar. And now 
had we reached the last sarcophagus, now were we 
abreast of the last bas-relief, already had we recovered 
the arrow-like flight of the illimitable central aisle, 
when coming up this aisle to meet us we beheld afar ofl' 
a female child, that rode in a carriage as frail as flow- 
ers. The mists, which went before her, hid the fawns 
that drew her, but could not hide the shells and tropic 
flowers with which she played — but could not hide 
the lovely smiles by which she uttered her trust in the 
mighty cathedral, and in the cherubim that looked down 
upon her from the mighty shafts of its pillars. Face 
to face she was meeting us ; face to face she rode, as 
if danger there were none. " Oh, baby ! " I exclaim- 
ed, " shalt thou be the ransom for Waterloo ? Must 
we, that carry tidings of great joy to every people, be 



206 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

messengers of ruin to thee ! " In "horror I rose at the 
thought ; but then also, in horror at the thought, rose 
one, that was sculptured on a bas-relief — a Dying 
Trumpeter. Solemnly from the field of battle he rose 
to his feet ; and, unslinging his stony trumpet, carried 
it, in his dying anguish, to his stony lips — sounding 
once, and yet once again ; proclamation that, in thy 
ears, oh baby ! spoke from the battlements of death. 
Immediately deep shadows fell between us, and aborig- 
inal silence. The choir had ceased to sing. The hoofs 
of our horses, the dreadful rattle of our harness, the 
groaning of our wheels, alarmed the graves no more. 
By horror the bas-relief had been unlocked into life. 
By horror we, that were so full of life, we men and our 
horses, with their fiery fore-legs rising in mid air to 
their everlasting gallop, were frozen to a bas-relief. 
Then a third time the trumpet sounded ; the seals were 
taken off all pulses ; life, and the frenzy of life, tore in- 
to their channels again ; again the choir burst forth in 
sunny grandeur, as from the muffling of storms and 
darkness ; again the thunderings of our horses carried 
temptation into the graves. One cry burst from our 
lips, as the clouds, drawing off from the aisle, showed 
it empty before us — '' Whither has the infant fled ? — 
is the young child caught up to God ? '' Lo ! afar off, 
in a vast recess, rose three mighty windows to the 
clouds ; and on a level with their summits, at height 
insuperable to man, rose an altar of purest alabaster. 
On its eastern face was trembling a crimson glory. A 
glory was it from the reddening dawn that now stream- 
ed through the windows ? Was it from the crimson 
robes of the martyrs painted on the windows ? Was 



DREAM -FUGUE. 207 

it from the bloody bas-reliefs of earth ? There, sud- 
denly, within that crimson radiance, rose the apparition 
of a woman's head, and then of a woman's figure. The 
child it was — grown up to woman's height. Clinging 
to the horns of the altar, voiceless she stood — sink- 
ing, rising, raving, despairing; and behind the volume 
of incense, that, night and day, streamed upwards from 
the altar, dimly was seen the fiery font, and the shadow 
of that dreadful being who should have baptized her 
with the baptism of death. But by her side was kneel- 
ing her better angel, that hid his face with wings ; that 
wept and pleaded for her ; that prayed when she could 
not; that fought with Heaven by tears for her deliver- 
ance ; which also, as he raised his immortal counte- 
nance from his wings, I saw, by the glory in his eye, 
that from Heaven he had won at last. 

V. 

Then was completed the passion of the mighty fugue. 
The golden tubes of the organ, which as yet had but 
muttered at intervals — gleaming amongst clouds and 
surges of incense — threw up, as from fountains un- 
fathomable, columns of heart-shattering music. Choir 
and anti-choir were filling fast with unknown voices. 
Thou also, Dying Trumpeter ! — with thy love that was 
victorious, and thy anguish that was finishing — didst 
enter the tumult; trumpet and echo — farewell love, 
and farewell anguish — rang through the dreadful 
sanctus. Oh, darkness of the grave ! that from the 
crimson altar and from the fiery font wert visited and 
searched by the effulgence in the angel's eye — were 
these indeed thy children ? Pomps of life, that, from 



208 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCE Y 

the burials of centuries, rose again to the voice of per 
feet joy, did ye indeed mingle with the festivals of 
Death ? Lo ! as I looked back for seventy leagues 
through the mighty cathedral, I saw the quick and the 
dead that sang together to God, together that sang to 
the generations of man. All the hosts of jubilation, 
like armies that ride in pursuit, moved with one step. 
Us, that, with laurelled heads, were passing from the 
cathedral, they overtook, and, as with a garment, they 
wrapped us round with thunders greater than our own. 
As brothers we moved together ; to the dawn that ad- 
vanced — to the stars that fled ; rendering thanks to 
God in the highest — that, having hid his face through 
one generation behind thick clouds of War, once again 
was ascending — from the Oampo Santo of Waterloo 
was ascending — in the visions of Peace; rendering 
thanks for thee, young girl ! whom, having overshadowed 
with his ineffable passion of death, suddenly did God re- 
lent ; suffered thy angel to turn aside his arm ; and even 
in thee, sister unknown ! shown to me for a moment only 
to be hidden for ever, found an occasion to glorify his 
goodness. A thousand times, amongst the phantoms 
of sleep, have I seen thee entering the gates of the gol- 
den dawn — with the secret word riding before thee — 
with the armies of the grave behind thee : seen thee 
sinking, rising, raving, despairing ; a thousand times in 
the worlds of sleep have seen thee followed by God's 
angel through storms ; through desert seas ; through the 
darkness of quicksands, through dreams, and the dread- 
ful revelations that are in dreams — only that at the last, 
with one sling of his victorious arm, he might snatch 
thee back from ruin, and might emblazon in thy deliv- 
erance the endless resurrections of his love ! 



NARRATIVES. 



THE SPANISH NUN. 

From the archives of the Royal Marine at Seville, from 
the autobiography of the heroine, from contemporary 
chronicles, and from several official sources scattered in 
and out of Spain, some of them ecclesiastical, the amplest 
proofs have been drawn, and may yet be greatly ex- 
tended, of the extraordinary events here recorded. M. 
de Ferrer, a Spaniard of much research, and originally 
incredulous as to the facts, published about seventeen 
years ago a selection from the leading documents, ac- 
companied by his palinode as to their accuracy. His 
materials have been since used for the basis of more 
than one narrative, not inaccurate, in French, German, 
and Spanish journals of high authority. It is seldom 
the case that French writers err by prolixity. They 
have done so in this case. The present narrative, which 
contains no sentence derived from any foreign one, has 
the great advantage of close compression ; my own 
pages, after equating the size, being as one to three of 
the shortest continental form. In the mode of narra- 
tion, I am vain enough to flatter myself that the reader 
will find little reason to hesitate between us. Mine, at 
least, weary nobody ; which is more that can be always 
said for the continental versions. 

On a night in the year 1592. (but which night is a 
secret liable to three hundred and sixty-five answers,) 
(211) 



212 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

a Spanish '' son of somehody,^^ * in the fortified town 
of St. Sebastian, received the disagreeable intelligence 
from a nurse that his wife had just presented him with 
a daughter. No present that the poor misjudging lady 
could possibly have made him was so entirely useless 
for any purpose of his. He had three daughters already > 
which happened to be more by 2-f-l than his reckoning 
assumed as a reasonable allowance of daughters. A 
supernumerary son might have been stowed away ; but 
daughters in excess were the very nuisance of Spain. 
He did, therefore, what in wsuch cases every proud and 
lazy Spanish gentleman was apt to do — he wrapped 
the new little daughter, odious to his paternal eyes, in a 
pocket handkerchief ; and then, wrapping up his own 
throat with a good deal more care, off he bolted to the 
neighboring convent of St. Sebastian, not merely of 
that city, but also (amongst several convents) the one 
dedicated to that saint. It is well that in this quarrel- 
some world we quarrel furiously about tastes, since 
agreeing too closely about the objects to be liked and 
appropriated would breed much more fighting than is 
bred by disagreeing. That little human tadpole, which 
the old toad of a father would not suffer to stay ten 
minutes in his house, proved as welcome at the nun- 
nery of St. Sebastian as she was odious elsewhere. The 
superior of the convent was aunt, by the mother's side, 
to the newborn stranger. She therefore kissed and 
blessed the little lady. The poor nuns, who were never 
to have any babies of their own, and were languishing 
for some amusement, perfectly doted on this prospect 

* That is, " hidalgo." 



THE SPANISH NUN. 213 

of a wee pet. The superior thanked the hidalgo for 
his very splendid present; the nuns thanked him each 
and all ; until the old crocodile actually began to cry 
and whimper sentimentally at what he now perceived to 
be excess of munificence in himself. Munificence, in- 
deed, he remarked, was his foible, next after parental 
tenderness. 

What a luxury it is sometimes to a cynic that there 
go two words to a bargain ! In the convent of St. Se- 
bastian all was gratitude, — gratitude (as aforesaid) to 
the hidalgo from all the convent for his present, — until 
at last the hidalgo began to express gratitude to tlieiJi 
for their gratitude to him. Then came a rolling fire of 
thanks to St. Sebastian ; from the superior, for sending 
a future saint ; from the nuns, for sending such a love of 
a plaything ; and finally from papa, for sending such sub- 
stantial board and well-bolted lodgings, " from which," 
said the malicious old fellow, " my pussy will never find 
her way out to a thorny and dangerous world." Won't 
she ? I suspect, son of somebody, that the next time 
you see " pussy," which may happen to be also the last, 
will not be in a convent of any kind. At present, whilst 
this general rendering of thanks was going on, one per- 
son only took no part in them. That person was " pus- 
sy," whose little figure lay quietly stretched out in the 
arms of a smiling young nun, with eyes nearly shut, yet 
peering a little at the candles. Pussy said nothing ; it's 
of no great use to say much when all the world is 
against you ; but if St. Sebastian had enabled her to speak 
out the whole truth, pussy would have said, " So, Mr. 
Hidalgo, you have been engaging lodgings for me — 



214 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCE Y. 

lodgings for life. Wait a little. We'll try that ques- 
tion when my claws are grown a little longer." 

Disappointment, therefore, was gathering ahead ; but 
for the present there was nothing of the kind. That 
noble old crocodile, papa, was not in the least disap- 
pointed as regarded his expectation of having no anxiety 
to waste, and no money to pay, on account of his young- 
est daughter. lie insisted on his right to forget her ; 
and in a week had forgotten her, never to think of her 
again but once. The lady superior, as regarded her de- 
mands, was equally content, and through a course of 
several years ; for, as often as she asked pussy if she 
would be a saint, pussy replied that she would, if saints 
were allowed plenty of sweetmeats. But least of all 
were the nuns disappointed. Every thing that they had 
fancied possible in a human plaything fell short of what 
pussy realized in racketing, racing, and eternal plots 
against the peace of the elder nuns. No fox ever kept 
a hen roost in such alarm as pussy kept the dormitory 
of the senior sisters ; whilst the younger ladies were 
run off their legs by the eternal wiles, and had their 
chapel gravity discomposed, even in chapel, by the eter- 
nal antics, of this privileged little kitten. 

The kitten had long ago received a baptismal name, 
which was Kitty : this is Catharine, or Kate, or Hispan- 
ice Catalina. It was a good name, as it recalled her 
original name of pussy. And, by the way, she had also 
an ancient and honorable surname, viz., De Erauso, 
which is to this day a name rooted in Biscay. Her fath- 
er, the hidalgo, was a military ojficer in the Spanish ser- 
vice, and had little care whether his kitten should turn 



THE SPANISH NUN. 215 

out a wolf or a lamb, having made over the fee simple 
of his own interest in the little Kate to St. Sebastian, 
" to have and to hold " so long as Kate should keep her 
hold of this present life. Kate had no apparent intention 
to let slip that hold ; for she was blooming as a rosebush 
in June, tall and strong as a young cedar. Yet, not- 
withstanding this robust health and the strength of the 
convent walls, the time was drawing near when St. Se- 
bastian's lease in Kate must, in legal phrase, " deter- 
mine ; " and any chateaux en Espag-ne that the saint 
might have built on the cloisteral fidelity of his pet Oa- 
talina must suddenly give way in one hour, like many 
other vanities in our own days of Spanish bonds and 
promises. After reaching her tenth year, Catalina be- 
came thoughtful, and not very docile. At times she was 
even headstrong and turbulent, so tliat the gentle sister- 
hood of St. Sebastian, who had no other pet or plaything 
in the world, began to weep in secx^et, fearing that they 
might have been rearing by mistake some future tigress ; 
for, as to infancy, that, you know, is playful and inno- 
cent even in the cubs of a tigress. But there the ladies 
were going too far. Catalina was impetuous and aspir- 
ing, but not cruel. She was gentle, if people would let 
her be so ; but woe to those that took liberties with 
her ! 

The day is come, the evening is come, when our poor 
Kate, that had for fifteen years been so tenderly rocked 
in the arms of St. Sebastian and his daughters, and that 
lienceforth shall hardly find a breathing space between 
eternal storms, must see her peaceful cell, must see the 
holy chapel, for the last time. It was at vespers, it was 
during the chanting of the vesper service, that she finally 



216 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

read the secret signal for her departure, which long she 
had beeu looking for. It happened that her aunt, the 
lady principal, had forgotten her breviary. As this was 
in a private scrutoire, she did not choose to send a ser- 
vant for it, but gave the key to her niece. The niece, 
on opening the scrutoire, saw, with that rapidity of eye 
glance for the one thing needed in any great emergency 
which ever attended her through life, that noio was the 
moment for an attempt which, if neglected, might never 
return. There lay the total keys, in one massive trous- 
seau ^ of that fortress impregnable even to armies from 
without. St. Sebastian ! do you see what your pet is 
going to do ? And do it she will, as sure as your name 
is St. Sebastian. Kate went back to her aunt with the 
breviary and the key, but taking good care to leave that 
awful door, on whose hinge revolved her whole life, un- 
locked. Delivering the two articles to the superior, she 
complained of a headache ; [ah, Kate ! what did you 
know of headaches, except now and then afterwards 
from a stray bullet or so ?] upon which her aunt, kissing 
her forehead, dismissed her to bed. Now, then, through 
three fourths of an hour Kate will have free elbow room 
for unanchoring her boat, for unshipping her oars, and 
for pulling ahead right out of St. Sebastian's cove into 
the main ocean of life. 

Kate's advantages for her role in this life lay in four 
things — viz., in a well-built person and a particularly 
strong wrist. 2d. In a heart that nothing could appall. 
3d. In a sagacious head, never drawn aside from the 
hoc age [from the instant question of life] by any weak- 
ness of imagination. 4th. In a tolerably thick skin — 
not literally ; for she was fair and blooming, and deci- 



THE SPANISH NUN. 217 

dedly handsome, having such a skin as became a young 
woman of family in northernmost Spain. But her sen- 
sibilities were obtuse as regarded some modes of deli- 
cacy, some modes of equity, some modes of the world's 
opinion, and afl modes whatever of personal hardship. 
Lay a stress on that word some ; for, as to delicacy, 
she never lost sight of the kind which peculiarly concerns 
her sex. Long afterwards she told the pope himself, 
when confessing without disguise her sad and infinite 
wanderings to the paternal old man, (and I feel convinced 
of her veracity,) that in this respect, even then, at mid- 
dle age, she was as pure as is a child. As to the third 
item, — the world's opinion, — I don't know that you 
need lay a stress on some ; for, s:enerally speaking, all 
that the world did, said, or thought, was alike con- 
temptible in her eyes. I must add, though at the cost 
of interrupting the story by two or three more sen- 
tences, that Catalina had also a fifth advantage, which 
sounds humbly, but is really of use in a world where 
even to fold and seal a letter adroitly is not the least 
of accomplishments. She was a handy girl. She could 
turn her hand to any thing ; of which I will give you 
two memorable instances. Was there ever a girl in 
this world but herself that cheated and snapped her 
fingers at that awful Liquisition which brooded over the 
convents of Spain, that did this without collusion from 
outside, trusting to nobody but to herself, and what ? To 
one needle, two hanks of thread, and a very inferior 
pair of scissors. For that the scissors were bad, though 
Kate does not say so in her memoirs, I knew by an a 
priori argument — viz., because all scissors were bad in 
the year 1607. From this sketch of Catalina's char- 
10 



218 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

acter, the reader is prepared to understand the decision 
of her present proceeding. She had no time to lose ; 
the twilight favored her ; but she must get under hiding 
before pursuit commenced. Consequently she lost not 
one of her forty-five minutes in picking and choosing. 
No shilly shally in Kate. She saw with the eyeball of 
an eagle what was indispensable : some little money per- 
haps, to pay the first toll bar of life. So, out of four 
shillings in aunty's purse, she took one. You can't say 
that was exorbitant. 

Now she was ready — ready to cast off St. Sebastian's 
towing rope — ready to cut and run for port any where. 
The finishing touch of her preparations was to pick 
out the proper keys. Even there she showed the same 
discretion. She did do no gratuitous mischief. She 
did not take the wine celler key, which would have ir- 
ritated the good father confessor ; she took those keys 
only that belonged to her^ if ever keys did ; for they 
were the keys that locked her out from her natural birth- 
right of liberty. " Show me," says the Romish casuist, 
" her right in law to let herself out of that nunnery." 
" Show us," we reply, " your right to lock her in." 
Right or wrong, however, in strict casuistry, Kate 
was resolved to let herself out, and did so ; and, for fear 
any man should creep in whilst vespers lasted and steal 
the kitchen grate, she locked her old friends m. Then 
she sought a shelter. The air was not cold. She 
Imrried into a chestnut wood, and upon withered leaves 
slept till dawn. Spanish diet and youth leave the diges- 
tion undisordered and the slumbers light. When the lark 
rose, up rose Catalina. No time to lose ; for she was 
still in the dress of a nun, and liable to be arrested by 



THE SPANISH NUN. 219 

any man in Spain. With her armed finger (ay ; by the 
way, I forgot the thhiible ; but Kate did not) she set to 
work upon her amply-embroidered petticoat. She turned 
it wrong side out ; and, with the magic that only female 
hands possess, she had soon sketched and finished a 
dashing pair of Wellington trousers. All other changes 
were made according to the materials she possessed, and 
quite sufficiently to disguise the two main perils — her 
sex and her monastic dedication. What was she to 
do next ? Speaking of Wellington trousers would re- 
mind us^ but could hardly remind her^ of Vittoria, vvliere 
she dimly had heard of some maternal relative. To Vit- 
toria, therefore, she bent her course ; and, like the Duke 
of Wellington, but arriving more than two centuries ear- 
lier, (though he, too, is an early riser,) she gained a 
great victory at that place. She had made a two days' 
march, baggage far in the rear, and no provisions but 
wild berries. She depended for any thing better, as light- 
heartedly as the duke, upon attacking, sword in hand, 
storming, her dear friend's intrenchments, and effecting 
a lodgment in his breakfast room, should he happen to 
have one. This amiable relative, an elderly man, had 
but one foible, or perhaps one virtue, in this world ; but 
that he had in perfection : it was pedantry. On that 
hint Catalina spoke. She knew by heart, from the ser- 
vices of the convent, a few Latin phrases. Latin ! — 0, 
but that was charming ; and in one so young ! The 
grave don owned the soft impeachment, relented at once, 
and clasped the hopeful young gentleman in the Wel- 
lington trousers to his uncular and rather angular breast. 
In this house the yarn of life was of a mingled qual- 
ity. The table was good ; but that was exactly wha/ 



220 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEr. 

Kate cared little about. The amusement was of tlie 
worst kind. It consisted chiefly in conjugating Latin 
verbs, especially such as were obstinately irregular. 
To show him a withered, frostbitten verb that want- 
ed its preterite, wanted its supines, wanted, in fact, 
every thing in this world, fruits or blossoms, that make 
a verb desirable, was to earn the don's gratitude for 
life. All day long he was marching and countermarch- 
ing his favorite brigades of verbs — verbs frequenta- 
tive, verbs inceptive, verbs desiderative — horse, foot, 
and artillery ; changing front, advancing from the 
rear, throwing out skirmishing parties ; until Kate, not 
given to faint, must have thought of such a resource as 
once in her life she had thought so seasonably of a ves- 
per headache. This was really worse than St. Sebas- 
tian's. Now, you know, when the time comes that nous 
nous ennuyons, the best course is to part. Kate saw 
that; and she walked off from the don's, (of whose am- 
orous passion for defective verbs one would have wished 
to know the catastrophe,) and took from his mantel 
piece rather more silver than she had levied on her aunt. 
But the don, also, was a relative ; and really he owed 
her a small check on his banker for turning out on his 
field days. A man, if he is a kinsman, has no right to 
bore one gratis. 

From Yittoria, Kate was guided by a carrier to Val- 
ladolid. Luckily, as it seemed at first, — but it made 
little difference in the end, — here, at Valladolid, were 
the king and his court ; consequently there was plenty 
of regiments and plenty of regimental bands. Attract- 
ed by one of these, Catalina was quietly listening to the 
music, when some street rufi&ans, in derision of the gay 



THE SPANISH NUN. 221 

colors and the form of her forest-made costume, (ras- 
cals ! one would like to have seen what sort of trousers 
they would have made with no better scissors,) began 
to pelt her with stones. Ah, my friends of tlie genus 
blackgvard, you little know who it is that you are se- 
lecting for experiments. This is the one creature of 
fifteen in all Spain, be the other male or female, whom 
nature, and temper, and provocation have qualified for 
taking the conceit out of you. This she very soon did, 
laying open a head or two with a sharp stone, and let- 
ting out rather too little than too much of bad Vallado- 
lid blood. But mark the constant villany of this world. 
Certain alguazils, — very like some other alguazils that 
I know nearer home, — having stood by quietly to see 
the friendless stranger insulted and assaulted, now felt 
it their duty to apprehend the poor nun for murderous 
violence; and, had there been such a thing as a tread- 
mill in Valladolid, Kate was booked for a place on it 
without further inquiry. Luckily, injustice does not al- 
ways prosper. A gallant young cavalier, who had wit- 
nessed from his windows the whole affiiir, had seen the 
provocation, and admired Catalina's behavior, — equally 
patient at first, and bold at last , — hastened into the 
street, pursued the officers, forced them to release their 
prisoner upon stating the circumstances of the case, and 
instantly offered Catalina a situation amongst his retinue. 
He was a man of birth and fortune ; and the place off'er- 
ed, that of an honorary page, not being at all degrading 
even to a " daughter of somebody," was cheerfully accept- 
ed. Here Catalina spent a happy month. She was now 
splendidly dressed, in dark-blue velvet, by a tailor that 
did not work within the gloom of a chestnut forest. She 



222 BEADTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

and the 3'oung cavalier, Don Francisco de Cardenas, were 
mutually pleased and had mutual confidence. All went 
well ; when one evening, but, luckily, not until the sun 
had been set so long as to make all things indistinct, who 
should march into the antechamber of the cavalier but 
that sublime of crocodiles, papa, that we lost sight of 
fifteen years ago, and shall never see again after this 
night ! He had his crocodile tears all ready for use, 
in working order, like a good industrious lire engine. 
It was absolutely to Catalina herself that he advanced ; 
whom, for many reasons, he could not be supposed to 
recognize : lapse of years, male attire, twilight, were all 
against him. Still she might have the family counten- 
ance ; and Kate thought he looked with a suspicious 
scrutiny into her face as he inquired for the young don. 
To avert her own face, to announce him to Don Fran- 
cisco, to wish him on the shores of that ancient river 
for crocodiles, the Nile, furnished but one moment's work 
to the active Catalina. She lingered, however, as her 
place entitled her to do, at the door of the audience 
chamber. She guessed already, but in a moment she 
heard from papa's lips, what was the nature of his er- 
rand. His daughter Catharine, he informed the don, had 
eloped from the convent of St. Sebastian — a place rich 
in delight. Then he laid open the unparalleled ingrat- 
itude of such a step. the unseen treasure that had 
been spent upon that girl ! the untold sums of money 
that he had sunk in that unhappy speculation ! the nights 
of sleeplessness suffered during her infancy ! the fifteen 
years of solicitude thrown away in schemes for her im- 
provement ! It would have moved the heart of a stone. 
The hidalgo wept copiously at his own pathos. And 



THE SPANISH NUN. 223 

to such a height of grandeur had he carried his Spanish 
sense of the sublime, that he disdained to mention the 
pocket handkerchief which he had left at St. Sebastian's 
fifteen years ago, by way of envelope for " pussy," and 
which, to the best of pussy's knowledge, was the one 
sole memorandum of papa ever heard of at St. Sebas- 
tian's. Pussy, however, saw no use in revising and 
correcting the text of papa's remembrances. She show- 
ed her usual prudence and her usual incomparable de- 
cision. It did not appear, as yet, that she would be 
reclaimed or was at all suspected for the fugitive by 
her father ; for it is an instance of that singular fatality 
which pursued Catalina through life, that, to her own 
astonishment, (as she now collected from her father's 
conference,) nobody had traced her to Valladolid, nor 
had her father's visit any connection with suspicious 
travelling in that direction. The case was quite differ- 
ent. Strangely enough, her street row had thrown her 
into the one sole household in all Spain that had an 
ofi&cial connection with St. Sebastian's. That convent 
had been founded by the young cavalier's family ; and, 
according to the usage of Spain, the young man (as pre- 
sent representative of his house) was the responsible 
protector of the establishment. It was not to the don 
as harborer of his daughter, but to the don as ex officio 
visitor of the convent, that the hidalgo was appealing. 
Probably Kate might have staid safely sometime longer. 
Yet, again, this would but have multiplied the clews for 
tracing her ; and, finally, she would too probably have 
been discovered ; after which, with all his youthful 
generosity, the poor don could not have protected her. 
Too terrific was the vengeance that awaited an abetter 



224 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

of any fugitive nun ; but, above all, if such a crime were 
perpetrated by an official mandatory of the church. Yet, 
again, so far as it was the hazardous course to abscond, 
tliat it almost revealed her to the young don as the 
missing daughter. Still, if it really had that effect, 
nothing at present obliged him to pursue her, as might 
have been the case a few weeks later. Kate argued (I 
dare say) rightly, as she always did. Her prudence 
whispered eternally, that safety there was none for her 
until she had laid the Atlantic between herself and St. 
Sebastian's. Life was to be for her a Bay of Biscay ; 
and it was odds but she had first embarked upon this 
billowy life from the literal Bay of Biscay. Chance 
ordered otherwise. She crept up stairs to her bed- 
room. Simple are the travelling preparations of those 
that, possessing nothing, have no imperials to pack. She 
had Juvenal's qualification for carolling gayly througli 
a forest full of robbers ; for she had nothing to lose but 
a change of linen, that rode easily enough under her 
left arm, leaving the right free for answering any ques- 
tions of impertinent customers. As she crept down 
she heard the crocodile still weeping forth his sorrows 
to the pensive ear of twilight and to the sympathetic 
Don Francisco. Now, it would not have been filial or 
ladylike for Kate to do what I am going to suggest ; 
but what a pity that some gay brother page had not 
been there to turn aside into the room, armed with a 
roasted potato, and, taking a sportsman's aim, to have 
lodged it in the crocodile's abominable mouth ! Yet 
what an anachronism ! There were no roasted potatoes 
in Spain at that date, and very few in England. But 
anger drives a man to say any thing. 



THE SPANISH NUN. 225 

Catalina had seen her last of friends and enemies in 
Yalladolid. Where should Kate pass the night in 
safety ? Her conclusion was, that the best door to 
knock at in such a case was the door where there was 
no need to knock at all, as being unfastened and open 
to all comers ; for she argued that within such a door 
there would be nothing to steal ; so that, at least, you 
could not be mistaken in the dark for a thief. Then, 
as to stealing from her, ih^j might do that if they could. 

Upon these principles, which hostile critics will in 
vain endeavor to undermine, she laid her hand upon 
what seemed a rude stable door. Such it proved. 
There was an empty cart inside — certainly there was; 
but you couldn't take that away in your pocket : and 
there were five loads of straw ; but then of those a lady 
could take no more than her reticule would carry, 
which perhaps was allowed by the courtesy of Spain. So 
Kate was right as to the difficulty of being challenged 
for a thief. Closing the door as gently as she had open- 
ed it, she dropped her person, dressed as she was, upon 
the nearest heap of straw. Some ten feet farther were 
lying two muleteers, honest and happy enough, as com- 
pared with the lords of the bed chamber then in Yalla- 
dolid, but still gross men, carnally deaf from eating 
garlic and onions and other horrible substances. Ac- 
cordingly they never heard her, nor were aware, until 
dawn, that such a blooming person existed. But she 
was aware of them and of their conversation. They 
were talking of an expedition for America, on the point 
of sailing, under Don Ferdinand de Cordova. It was 
to sail from some Andalusian port. That was the very 
thing for her. At daylight she woke and jumped up, 
10* 



226 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

needing no more toilet than the birds that already were 
singing in the gardens, or than the two muleteers, who, 
good, honest follows, saluted the handsome boy kindly 
— thinkhig no ill at his making free with their straw, 
though no leave had been asked. 

With these philo-garlic men Kate took her departure. 
The morning was divine ; and, leaving Valladolid with 
the transports that befitted such a golden dawn, feeling 
also already, in the very obscurity of her exit, the pledge 
of her escape, she cared no longer for the crocodile, or 
for St. Sebastian, or (in the way of fear) for the pro- 
tector of St. Sebastian; though of him she thought 
with some tenderness, so deep is the remembrance of 
kindness mixed with justice. Andalusia she reached 
rather slowly, but many months before she was sixteen 
years old, and quite in time for the expedition. St. 
Lucar being the port of rendezvous for the Peruvian ex- 
pedition, tbither she went. All comers were welcome 
on board the fleet, much more a fine young fellow like 
Kate. She was at once engaged as a mate ; and her 
ship, in particular, after doubling Cape Horn without 
loss, made the coast of Peru. Paita was the port of 
her destination. Very near to this port they were 
when a storm threw them upon a coral reef. • There 
was little hope of the ship from the first ; for she was 
unmanageable, and was not expected to hold together 
for twenty-four hours. In this condition, with death 
before their faces, mark what Kate did, and please to 
remember it for her benefit when she does any other 
little thing that angers you. The crew lowered the 
longboat. Yainly the captain protested against this 
disloyal desertion of a king's ship, which might yet, 



THE SPANISH NUN. 227 

perhaps, be run on shore, so as to save the stores. All 
the crew, to a man, deserted the captain. You may 
say that literally ; for the single exception was not a 
man, being our boldhearted Kate. She was the only 
sailor that refused to leave her captain or the King of 
Spain's ship. The rest pulled away for the shore, and 
with fair hopes of reaching it. But one half hour told 
another tale. Just about that time came a broad sheet 
of lightning, which, through the darkness of evening, 
revealed the boat in the very act of mounting like a 
norse upon an inner reef, instantly filling, and throwing 
out the crew, every man of whom disappeared amongst 
the breakers. The night which succeeded was gloomy 
for both the representatives of his Catholic majesty. 
It cannot be denied by the greatest of philosophers that 
the muleteer's stable at Yalladolid was worth twenty 
such ships, though the stable was not insured against 
fire, and the ship ivas insured against the sea and the 
wind by some fellow that thought very little of his en- 
gagements. But what's the use of sitting down to cry ? 
That was never any trick of Catalina's. By daybreak 
she was at work with an axe in her hand. I knew it 
before ever I came to this place in her memoirs. I 
felt, as sure as if I had read it, that when day broke 
we should find Kate hard at work. Thimble or axe, 
trousers or raft, all one to her. 

The captain, though true to his duty, seems to have 
desponded. He gave no help towards the raft. Signs 
were speaking, however, pretty loudly, that he must do 
something ; for notice to quit was now served pretty 
liberally. Kate's raft was ready ; and she encouraged 
the captain to think that it would give both of them 



228 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

something to hold on by in swimming, if not even carry 
double. At this moment, when all was waiting for a 
start, and the ship herself was waiting for a final lurch, 
to say Good by to the King of Spain, Kate went and 
did a thing which some misjudging people will object 
to. She knew of a box laden with gold coins, reputed 
to be the King of Spain's, and meant for contingencies 
in the voyage out. This she smashed open with her 
axe, and took a sum equal to one hundred guineas 
English, which, having well securred in a pillow case, 
she then lashed firmly to the raft. Now, this, you 
know, though not '-'- floUom^'' because it would not 
float, was certainly, by maritime law, '■'• jetsomP It 
would be the idlest of scruples to fancy that the sea or 
a shark had a better right to it than a philosopher, or 
a splendid girl who showed herself capable of writing 
a very fair octavo, to say nothing of her decapitating 
in battle several of the king's enemies and recovering 
the king's banner. No sane moralist would hesitate 
to do the same thing under the same circumstances on 
board an English vessel, though the first lord of the 
admiralty should be looking on. The raft was now 
thrown into the sea. Kate jumped after it, and then 
entreated the captain to follow her. He attempted it ; 
but, wanting her youthful agility, he struck his head 
against a spar and sank like lead, giving notice below 
that his ship was coming. Kate mounted the raft and 
was gradually washed ashore, but so exhausted as to 
have lost all recollection. She lay for hours until the 
warmth of the sun revived her. On sitting up, she saw 
a desolate shore stretching both ways — nothing to eat, 
nothing to drink ; but fortunately the raft and the 



THE SPANISH NUN. 229 

money hcid been thrown near her, none of the hishiugs 
having given way ; only what is the use of a guinea 
amongst tangle and seagulls ? The money she distrib- 
uted amongst her pockets, and soon found strength to 
rise and march forward. But which was forward ? 
and which backward ? She knew by the conyersation 
of the sailors that Paita must be in the neighborhood ; 
and Paita, being a port, could not be in the inside of 
Peru, but of course somewhere on its outside, and the 
outside of a maritime land must be the shore ; so that, 
if she kept the shore and went far enough, she could 
not fail of hitting her foot against Paita at last, in the 
very darkest night, provided only she could first find 
out which was vp and which was down; else she might 
walk her shoes off and find herself six thousand miles 
in the wrong. Here was an awkward case, all for 
want of a guidepost. Still, when one thinks of Kate's 
prosperous horoscope, that, after so long a voyage, she 
only out of the total crew was thrown on the American 
shore, w4th one hundred and five pounds in her purse 
of clear gain on the voyage, a conviction arises that 
she could not guess wrongly. She might have tossed 
up, having coins in her pocket, //eac/5 or tails? But 
this kind of sortilege was then coming to be thought 
irreligious in Christendom, as a Jewish and a heathen 
mode of questioning the dark future. She simply 
guessed, therefore ; and very soon a thing happened 
which, though adding nothing to strengthen her guess 
as a true one, did much to sweeten it if it should prove 
a false one. On turning a point of the shore, she came 
upon a barrel of biscuit washed ashore from the ship. 
Biscuit is about the best thing I know ; but it is the 



230 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

soonest spoiled ; and one would like to hear counsel on 
one puzzling point, why it is that a touch of water utterly 
ruins it, taking its life, and leaving a caput mortuum 
corpse. Upon this caput Kate breakfasted, though her 
case was worse than mine ; for any water that ever plagued 
me was always fresh : now, hers was a present from the 
Pacific Ocean. She, that was always prudent, packed 
up some of the Catholic king's biscuit as she had previ- 
ously packed up far too little of his gold. About twi- 
light on the second day she found herself entering Paita, 
without having had to swim any river in her walk. 

The first thing in such a case of distress which a young 
lady does, even if she happens to be a young gentleman, 
is to beautify her dress. Kate always attended to that^ 
as we know, having overlooked her in the chestnut wood. 
The man she sent for was not properly a tailor, but one 
who employed tailors, he himself furnishing the mate- 
rials. His name was Urquiza — a fact of very little 
importance to us in 1847, if it had stood only at the 
head and foot of Kate's little account ; but, unhappily 
for Kate's debut on this vast American stage, the case 
was otherwise. Mr. Urquiza had the misfortune 
(equally common in the old world and the new) of be- 
ing a knave, and also a showy, specious knave. Kate, 
who had prospered under sea allowances of biscuit and 
hardship, was now expanding in proportions. With 
very little vanity or consciousness on that head, she 
aow displayed a really fine person ; and, when dressed 
anew in the way that became a young officer in the Span- 
ish service, she looked* the representative picture of a 

* " She looked,^^ &c. — If ever the reader should visit Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle, he will probably feel interest enough in the poor, wild, impassioned 



THE SPANISH NUN. 231 

Spanish caballador. It is strange that such an appear- 
ance and such a rank should have suggested to Urquiza 
the presumptuous idea of wishing that Kate might be- 
come his clerk. He did^ however, wish it ; for Kate 
wrote a beautiful hand ; and a stranger thing is, that 
Kate accepted his proposal. This might arise from 
the difficulty of moving in those days to any distance 
in Peru. The ship had been merely bringing stores to 
the station of Paita ; and no corps of the royal armies 
was readily to be reached, whilst something must bo 
done at once for a livelihood. Urquiza had two mer- 
cantile establishments — one at Trujillo, to which he 
repaired in person, on Kate's agreeing to undertake 
the management of the other in Paita. Like the sensi- 
ble girl that we have always found her, she demanded 
specific instructions for her guidance in duties so new. 
Mr. Urquiza's instructions were short, easy to be under- 
stood, but rather comic ; and yet wiiich is odd, they led 
to tragic results. There were two debtors of the 
shop (many^ it is to be hoped, but two meriting his 
affectionate notice) with respect to whom he left the 
most opposite directions. The one was a very hand- 
some lady ; and the rule as to her was, that she was 
to have credit unlimited, strictly unlimited. That was 
plain. The other customer favored by Mr. Urquiza's 

girl to look out for a picture of her in that city, and the only one known 
certainly to be authentic. It is in the collection of Mr. Sempeller. For 
some time it was supposed that the best (if not the only) portrait of her 
lurked somewhere in Italy, Since the discovery of the picture at Aix- 
la-Chapelle, that notion has been abandoned ; but there is great reason 
to believe that, both in Madrid and Rome, many portraits of her must 
have been painted to meet the intense interest which arose in her history 
subsequently amongst all the men of rank, military or ecclesiastical, 
whether in Italy or Spain. 



232 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

valedictory thoughts was a young man, cousin to the 
handsome lady, and bearing the name of Reyes. This 
youth occupied in Mr. Urquiza's estimate the same 
hyperbolical rank as tlie handsome lady, but on the op- 
posite side of the equation. The rule as to him was, 
that he was to have no credit, strictly none. In this 
case, also, Kate saw no difficulty ; and, when she came 
to know Mr. Reyes a little, she found the path of pleas- 
ure coinciding with the path of duty. Mr. Urquiza 
could not be more precise in laying down the rule than 
Kate was in enforcing it. 

Thus stood matters, when a party of strolling players 
strolled into Paita. Kate, as a Spaniard, being one 
held of the Paita aristocracy, was expected to attend. 
She did so ; and there, also was the malignant Reyes. 
He came and seated himself purposely, so as to shut out 
Kate from all view of the stage. She, who had nothing 
of the bully in her nature, and was a gentle creature 
when her wild Biscayan blood had not been kindled by 
insult, courteously requested him to move a little ; 
upon which Reyes remarked that it was not in his 
power to oblige the clerk as to that, but that he could 
oblige him by cutting his throat. The tiger that slept 
in Catalina wakened at once. She seized him, and 
would have executed vengeance on the spot, but that 
a party of young men interposed to part them. The 
next day, when Kate (always ready to forget and for- 
give) was thinking no more of the row, Reyes passed. 
By spitting at the window, and other gestures insulting 
to Kate, again he roused her Spanish blood. Out she 
rushed, sword in hand. A duel began in the street, 
and very soon Kate's sword had passed into the heart 



THE SPANISH NUN. 238 

of Reyes. Now that the mischief was done, the police 
were, as usual, all alive for the pleasure of avenging it. 
Kate found herself suddenly in a strong prison, and 
with small hopes of leaving it except for execution. 
The relations of the dead man were potent in Paita, 
and clamorous for justice ; so that the corregidor^ in a 
case wheie he saw a very poor cliance of being corrupt- 
ed by bribes, felt it his duty to be sublimely incorrupti- 
ble. The reader knows, however, that amongst the 
relatives of the deceased bully was that handsome lady, 
who differed as much from her cousin in her sentiments 
as to Kate as she did in the extent of her credit with 
Mr. Urquiza. To her Kate wrote a note, and, using 
one of the Spanish king's gold coins for bribing the 
jailer, got it safely delivered. That, perhaps, was un- 
necessary ; for the lady had been already on the alert, 
and had summoned Urquiza from Trujillo. By some 
means, not very luminously stated, and by paying proper 
fees in proper quarters, Kate was smuggled out of the 
prison at nightfall and smuggled into a pretty house in 
the suburbs. 

Egress was left easy. But, when out and free once 
more in the bright starry night, which way should Kate 
turn ? The whole city would prove but a rat trap for 
her, as bad as Mr. Urquiza's if she was not off before 
morning. At a glance, she comprehended that the sea 
was her only chance. To the port she fled. All was 
silent. Watchmen there were none. She jumped into 
a boat. To use the oars was dangerous, for she had no 
means of muffling them. But she contrived to hoist a 
sail, pushed off with a boat hook, and was soon stretch- 
ing across the water for the mouth of the harbor before 



234 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

a breeze light but favorable. Having cleared the diffi- 
culties of exit, she lay down, and unintentionally fell 
asleep. When she awoke, the sun had been up three 
or four hours ; all was right otherwise ; but, had she 
not served as a sailor, Kate would have trembled upon 
finding that, during her long sleep of perhaps seven or 
eight hours, she had lost sight of land, by what distance 
she could only guess, and in what direction was to some 
degree doubtful. All this, however, seemed a great 
advantage to the bold girl, throwing her thoughts back 
on the enemies she had left behind. The disadvantage 
was, having no breakfast, not even damaged biscuit ; 
and some anxiety naturally arose as to ulterior prospects 
a little beyond the horizon of breakfast. But w^io's 
afraid ? As sailors whistle for a wind, Catalina really 
had but to whistle for any thing with energy, and it 
was sure to come. Like Caesar to the pilot of Dyrrha- 
chium, she might have said, for the comfort of her poor 
timorous boat, (though destined soon to perish), " Cat- 
alinam vehis, et fortunas ejus.^^ Meantime, being very 
doubtful as to the best course for sailing, and content 
if her course did but lie off shore, she " carried on," 
as sailors say, under easy sail, going, in fact, just whither 
and just how the Pacific breezes suggested in the 
gentlest of whispers. All right behind, was Kate's 
opinion ; and, what was better, very soon she might 
say, All right ahead for, some hour or tw^o before sun- 
set, when dinner was for once becoming, even to Kate, 
the most interesting of subjects for meditation, suddenly 
a large ship began to swell upon the brilliant atmos- 
phere. In those latitudes, and in those years, any ship 
was pretty sure to be Spanish : sixty years later, the 



THE SPANISH NUN. 235 

odds ^Terc in favor of its being an English buccaneer^ 
which would have given a i.ew direction to Kate's 
energy. Kate continued to make signals with a hand- 
kerchief whiter than the crocodile's of Ann. Dom. 1592, 
else it would hardly have been noticed. Perhaps, after all, 
it would not, but that the ship's course carried her very 
nearly across Kate's. The stranger lay-to for her. It 
was dark by the time Kate steered herself undei the 
ship's quarter ; and then was seen an instance of this 
girl's eternal wakefulness. Something was painted on 
the stern of her boat, she could not see what ; but she 
judged that it would express some connection with the 
port that she had just quitted. Now, it was her wish 
to break the chain of traces connecting her with such a 
scamp as Urquiza ; since else, through his commercial 
correspondence, he might disperse over Peru a portrait 
of herself by no means flattering. How should she 
accomplish this ? It was dark ; and she stood, as you 
may see an Etonian do at times, rocking her little boat 
from side to side to side until it had taken in water as 
much as might be agreeable. Too much it proved for the 
boat's constitution, and the boat perished of dropsy — 
Kate declining to tap it. She got a ducking herself; but 
what cared she ? Up the ship's side she went, as gayly 
as ever, in those years when she was called pussy, she 
had raced after the nuns of St. Sebastian, jumped upon 
deck, and told the first lieutenant, when he questioned 
her about her adventures, quite as much truth as any 
man. under the rank of admiral, had a right to expect 
This ship was full of recruits for the Spanish army, 
and bound to Concepcion. Even in that, destiny was 
an iteration or repeating memorial of tte significance 



236 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

that ran through Catalina's most casual adventures. 
She had enlisted amongst the soldiers ; and, on reach- 
ing port, the very first person who came oif from shore 
was a dashing young military officer, whom at once, by 
his name and rank, (though she had never consciously 
seen him,) she identified as her own brother. He was 
splendidly situated in the service, being the governor 
general's secretary, besides his rank as a cavalry officer; 
and, his errand on board being to inspect the recruits, 
naturally, on reading in the roll one of them described 
as a Biscayan, the ardent young man came up with 
highbred courtesy to Catalina, took the young recruit's 
hand with kindness, feeling that to be a compatriot at 
so great a distance was to be a sort of relative, and 
asked with emotion after old boyish remembrances. 
There was a scriptural pathos in what followed, as if it 
were some scene of domestic reunion opening itself 
from patriarchal ages. The young officer was the 
eldest son of the house, and had left Spain when Cata- 
lina was only three years old. But, singularly enough, 
Catalina it was, the little wild cat that he yet remem- 
bered seeing at St. Sebastian's, upon whom his earliest 
inquiries settled. " Did the recruit know his family, 
the De Eurasos ? " 0, yes ; everybody knew them. 
"• Did the recruit know little Catalina ? " Catalina 
smiled as she replied that she did, and gave such an 
animated description of the little fiery wretch as made 
the officer's eye flash with gratified tenderness, and 
with certainty that the recruit was no counterfeit Bis- 
cayan. Indeed, you know, if Kate couldn't give a 
good description of " pussy," who could ? The issue 
of the interview was, that the officer insisted on Kate's 



THE SPANISH NUN. 237 

making a home of his quarters. He did other services 
for his unknown sister. He placed her as a trooper in 
his own regiment, and favored her in many a way that 
is open to one having authority. But the person, after 
all, that did most to serve our Kate, was Kate. War 
was then raging with Indians both from Chili and Peru. 
Kate had always done her duty in action ; but at length, 
in the decisive battle of Puren, there was an opening 
for doing something more. Havoc had been made of 
her own squadron ; most of the officers were killed, and 
the standard was carried off. Kate gathered around 
her a small party — galloped after the Indian column 
that was carrying away the trophy — charged — saw 
all her own party killed — but (in spite of wounds on 
her face and shoulder,) succeeded in bearing away 
the recovered standard. She rode up to the general 
and his staff ; she dismounted ; she rendered up her 
prize, and fainted away, much less from the blinding 
blood than from the tears of joy which dimmed her 
eyes as the general, waving his sword in admiration 
over her head, pronounced our Kate on the spot an 
alfirez, or standard bearer, with a commission from the 
King of Spain and the Indies. Bonny Kate ! noble 
Kate ! I would there were not two centuries laid be- 
tween us, so that I might have the pleasure of kissing 
thy fair hand. 

Kate had the good sense to see the danger of reveal- 
ing her sex, or her relationship, even to her own 
brother. The grasp of the church never relaxed, never 
" prescribed," unless freely and by choice. The nun, 
if discovered, would have been taken out of the horse 
barracks or the dragoon saddle. She had the firnmess, 



238 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

therefore, for many years to resist the sisterly impulses 
that sometimes suggested such a confidence. For 
years, and those years the most important of her life, — 
the years that developed her character — she lived 
undetected as a brilliant cavalry officer under her 
brother's patronage. Years after this period, a young 
officer dining with Kate, entreated her to become his 
second in a duel. Such things were every-day affairs. 
However, Kate had reasons for declining the ser- 
vice, and did so ; but the officer, as he was sullenly 
departing, said, that, if he were killed, (as he thought 
he should be) his death would lie at Kate's door. I 
do not take his view of the case, and am not moved by 
his rhetoric or his logic. Rate was, and relented. The 
duel was fixed for eleven at night, under the walls of a 
monastery. Unhappily the night proved unusually dark, 
so that the two principals had to tie white handker- 
chiefs round their elbows in order to descry each other. 
In the confusion they wounded each other mortally. 
Upon that, according to a usage not peculiar to Span- 
iards, but extending (as doubtless the reader knows) 
for a century longer to our own countrymen, the two 
seconds were obliged, in honor, to do something towards 
avenging their principals. Kate had her usual fatal 
luck. Her sword passed sheer through the body of her 
opponent. This unknown opponent, falling dead, had 
just breath left to cry out, " Ah, villain, you have kill- 
ed me !" in a voice of horrific reproach ; and the voice 
was the voice of her brother ! 

The monks of the monastery under whose silent 
shadows this murderous duel had taken place, roused 
by the clashing of swords and the angry shouts of com- 



THE SPANISH NUN. 239 

batants, issued out with torches to find one only of the 
four officers surviving. Every convent and altar had a 
right of asylum for a short period. According to the 
custom, the monks carried Kate, insensible with anguish 
of mind, to the sanctuary of their chapel. There, for 
some days they detained her ; but then, having furnish- 
ed her with a horse and some provisions, they turned 
her adrift. Which way should the unhappy fugitive turn ? 
In blindness of heart, she turned towards the sea. It 
was the sea that had brought her to Peru ; it was the 
sea that would, perhaps, carry her away. It was the 
sea that had first showed her this land and its golden 
hopes ; it was the sea that ought to hide from her its fear- 
ful remembrances. The sea it was that had twice spared 
her life in extremities ; the sea it was that might now, if 
it chose, take back the bauble that it had spared in vain. 
Three days our poor heroine followed the coast. 
Her horse was then almost unable to move ; and, on 
his account, she turned inland to a thicket for grass and 
shelter. As she drew near to it, a voice challenged, 
" Who goes there ? " Kate answered, " Spain.^^ " WJiat 
people ? " " A friend.^^ It was two soldiers, desert- 
ers, and almost starving. Kate shared her provisions 
with these men ; and on hearing their plan, which was 
to go over the Cordilleras, she agreed to join the party. 
Their object was the wild one of seeking the river Do- 
rado^ whose waters rolled along golden sands and whose 
pebbles were emeralds. Hers was to throw herself 
upon a line the least liable to pursuit, and the readiest for 
a new chapter of life in which oblivion might be found 
for the past. After a few days of incessant climbing 
and fatigue, they found themselves in the regions of 



240 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

perpetual snow. Summer would come as vainly to this 
kingdom of frost as to the grave of her brother. No 
fire, but the fire of human blood in youthful veins, 
could ever be kept burning in these aerial solitudes. Fuel 
was rarely to be found, and kindling a secret hardly 
known except to Indians. However, our Kate can do 
every thing ; and she's the girl, if ever girl did such a 
thing, or ever girl did not such a thing, that I back at 
any odds for crossing the Cordilleras. I would bet you 
something now, reader, if I thought you would deposit 
your stakes by return of post, (as they play at chess 
through the post office,) that Kate does the trick ; that 
she gets down to the other side ; that the soldiers do 
not ; and that the horse, if preserved at all, is preserved 
in a way that will leave him very little to boast of. 

The party had gathered wild berries and esculent 
roots at the foot of the mountains, and the horse was 
of very great use in carrying them. But this larder 
was soon emptied. There was nothing then to carry ; 
so that the horse's value, as a beast of burden, fell cent, 
per cent. In fact, very soon he could not carry himself, 
and it became easy to calculate when he would reach 
the bottom on the wrong side the Cordilleras. He took 
three steps back for one upwards. A council of war 
being held, the small army resolved to slaughter their 
horse. He, though a member of the expedition, had 
no vote ; and, if he had, the votes would have stood 
three to one — majority, two against him. He was cut 
into quarters ; which surprises me ; for, unless one 
quarter was considered his own share, it reminds one 
too much of this amongst the many facetice of English 
midshipmen, who ask (on any one of their number look- 



THE SPANISH NUN. 241 

ing sulky) " if it is his intention to marry and retire 
from the service upon a superannuation of £4 45. 4Jc?. 
a year, paid quarterly by way of bothering the purser." 
The purser can't do it with the help of farthings; and, 
as respects aliquot parts, four shares among three per- 
sons are as incommensurable as a guinea is against any 
attempt at giving change in half crowns. However, this 
was all the preservation that the horse found. No salt- 
petre or sugar could be had ; but the frost was antisep- 
tic ; and the horse was preserved in as useful a sense as 
ever apricots were preserved or strawberries. 

On a fire, painfully devised out of broom and wither- 
ed leaves, a horsesteak was dressed. For drink, snow 
was allowed a discretion. This ought to have revived 
the party ; and Kate, perhaps, it did. But the poor 
deserters were thinly clad, and they had not the boiling 
heart of Catalina. More and more they drooped. 
Kate did her best to cheer them. But the march was 
nearly at an end for them, and they were going in one 
half hour to receive their last billet. Yet, before this 
consummation, they have a strange spectacle to see, 
such as few places could show but the upper chambers 
of the Cordilleras. They had reached a billowy scene 
of rocky masses, large and small, looking shockingly 
black on their perpendicular sides as they rose out of 
the vast, snowy expanse. Upon the highest of these 
that was accessible, Kate mounted to look around her ; 
and she saw — 0, rapture at such an hour! — a man 
sitting on a shelf of rock, with a gun by his side. She 
shouted with joy to her comrades, and ran down to 
communicate the joyful news. Here was a sportsman, 
watching, perhaps, for an eagle ; and now they would 
11 



242 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

have relief. One man's cheek kindled with the hectic 
of sudden joy, and he rose eagerly to march. The 
other was fast sinking under the fatal sleep that Frost 
sends before herself as her merciful minister of death ; 
out hearing in his dream the tidings of relief, and as- 
sisted by his friends, he also staggeringly arose. Il 
could not be three minutes' walk, Kate thought, to the 
station of the sportsman. That thought supported them 
all. Under Kate's guidance, who had taken a sailor's 
glance at the bearings, they soon unthreaded the lab- 
yrinth of rocks so far as to bring the man within view. 
He had not left his resting-place ; their steps on the 
soundless snow, naturally, he could not hear ; and, as 
their road brought them upon him from the rear, still 
less could he see them. Kate hailed him ; but so keenly 
was he absorbed in some speculation, or in the object 
of his watching, that he took no notice of them, not 
even moving his head. Kate began to think there 
would be another man to rouse from sleep. Coming 
close behind him she touched his shoulder, and said, 
" My friend, are you sleeping ? " Yes, he was sleeping 
— sleeping the sleep from which there is no awaking ; 
and the slight touch of Kate having disturbed the 
equilibrium of the corpse, down it rolled on the snow ; 
the frozen body rang like a hollow iron cylinder, 
the face uppermost and blue with mould, mouth open, 
teeth ghastly and bleaching in the frost, and a fright- 
ful grin upon the lips. This dreadful spectacle finish- 
ed the struggles of the weaker man, who sank and 
died at once. The other made an effort with so much 
spirit, that, in Kate's opinion, horror had acted upon 
him beneficially as a stimulant. But it was not really 



THE SPANISH NUN. 243 

so; it was a spasm of morbid strength. A collapse 
succeeded ; his blood began to freeze ; he sat down in 
spite of Kate ; and he also died without further struggle. 
Gone are the poor, suffering deserters, stretched and 
bleaching upon the snow; and insulted discipline is 
avenged. Great kings have long arms ; and sycophants 
are ever at hand for the errand of the potent. What 
had frost and snow to do with the quarrel ? Yet they 
made themselves sycophantic servants of the King of 
Spain ; and theij dogged his deserters up to the summit 
of the Cordilleras more surely than any Spanish blood- 
hound or any Spanish tirailleur's bullet. 

Now is our Kate standing alone on the summits of 
the Andes in solitude that is shocking ; for she is alone 
with her own afflicted conscience. Twice before, she 
had stood in solitude as deep upon the wild, wild waters 
of the Pacific ; but her conscience had been then un- 
troubled. Now is there nobody left that can help ; her 
horse is dead ; the soldiers are dead. There is nobody 
that she can speak to except God ; and yqvj soon you 
will find that she does speak to him ; for already on 
these vast aerial deserts he has been whispering to her. 
The condition of Kate is exactly that of Coleridge's 
Ancient Mariner, 

Such, also, had been the offence of Kate ; such, also, 
was the punishment that now is dogging her steps. She, 
like the mariner, had slain the one sole creature that 
loved her upon the whole wide earth ; she, like the mar- 
iner, for this offence, had been hunted into frost and 
snow — very soon will be hunted into delirium: and 
from that (if she escapes with life) will be hunted into 
the trouble of a heart that cannot rest. In this only 



244 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

the darkness had been merciful to Kate — that it had 
hidden forever from her victim the hand that slew him. 
But now, in such utter solitude, her thoughts ran back 
to their earliest interview. She remembered with an- 
guish how, on first touching the shores of America, 
almost the very first word that met her ear had been 
from hirn^ the brother whom she had killed, about the 
" pussy " of times long past ; how the gallant young 
man bad hung upon her words as in her native Basque she 
described her own mischievous little self of twelve 
years back ; how his color went and came whilst his 
loving memory of the little sister was revived by 
her own descriptive traits, giving back, as in a mir- 
ror the fawn-like grace, the squirrel-like restlessness, 
that once had kindled his own delighted laughter ; 
how he would take no denial, but showed on the spot, 
that simply to have touched, to have kissed, to have 
played with the little wild thing tliat glorified by 
her innocence the gloom of St. Sebastian's cloisters, 
gave a rig^ht to his hospitality ; how, through liim only, 
she had found a welcome in camps ; how, through Aim, 
she had found the avenue to honor and distinction. And 
yet this brothei", so loving and generous, it was that she 
had dismissed from life. She paused ; she turned 
round, as if looking back for his grave ; she saw the 
dreadful wildernesses of snow which already she had 
traversed. Silent they were at this season, even as, in 
the panting heats of noon, the Zaarrahs of the torrid 
zone are oftentimes silent. Dreadful was tlie silence ; 
it Avas the nearest thing to the silence of the grave. 
Graves were at the foot of the Andes — that ^}\q knew 
too well ; graves were at the summit of the Andes — 



THE SPANISH NUN. 215 

that she saw too well ; and as she gazed^ a sudden 
thought flashed upon her when her eyes settled upon 
the corpses of the poor deserters : Could she, like them, 
have been all this while unconsciously executing judg- 
ment upon herself— running from a wrath that was 
doubtful into the very jaws of a wrath that was inexor- 
able — flying in panic, and behold there was no man 
that pursued ? For the first time in her life, Kate 
trembled ; not for the first time, Kate wept ; far less 
for the first time was it that Kate bent her knee— that 
Kate clasped her hands — that Kate prayed ; but it teas 
the first time that she prayed as they pray for whom no 
more hope is left but in prayer. 

verdure of human fields, cottages of men and 
women, (that now suddenly seemed all brothers and 
sisters,) cottages with children around them at play, 
that are so far below, — summer and spring, flowers 
and blossoms, to which, as to his symbols, God has 
given the gorgeous privilege of rehearsing forever upon 
earth his most mysterious perfection — life and the 
resurrections of life, — is it indeed true that poor Kate 
must never see you more ? Mutteringly she put that 
question to herself; but strange are the caprices of ebb 
and flow in the deep fountains of human sensibilities. 
At this very moment, when the utter incapacitation of 
despair was gathering fast at Kate's heart, a sudden 
lightening shot far into her spirit, a reflux almost su- 
pernatural, from the earliest efi'ects of her prayer. A 
thought had struck her all at once ; and this thought 
prompted her immediately to turn round. Perhaps it 
was in some blind yearning after the only memorials of 
life in this frightful region that she fixed her eye upon 



246 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

a point of hilly ground, by which she identified the 
spot near which the three corpses were lying. The si- 
lence seemed deeper than ever. Neither was there 
any phantom memorial of life for the eye or for the 
ear, nor wing of bird, nor echo, nor green leaf, nor 
creeping thing that moved or stirred upon the sound- 
less waste. 0, what a relief to this burden of silence 
would be a human groan ! Here seemed a motive for 
still darker despair ; and yet at that very moment a 
pulse of joy began to thaw the ice at her heart. It 
struck her, as she reviewed the ground, that undoubt- 
edly it had been for some time slowly descending. Her 
senses were much dulled by suffering ; but this thought 
it was, suggested by a sudden apprehension of a con- 
tinued descending movement, which had caused her to 
turn round. Sight had confirmed the suggestion first 
derived from her own steps. The distance attained 
was now sufficient to establish the tendency. 0, yes, 
yes, to a certainty she had been descending for some 
time. Frightful was the spasm of joy which whispered 
that the worst was over. It was as when the shadow 
of midnight, that murderers had relied on, is passing 
away from your beleaguered shelter, and dawn will 
soon be manifest. It was as when a flood, that all day 
long has raved against the walls of your house, has 
ceased (you suddenly think) to rise : yes, measured by 
a golden plummet, it is sinking beyond a doubt, and 
the darlings of your household are saved. Kate faced 
round in agitation to her proper direction. She saw, 
what previously in her stunning confusion she had not 
seen, that, hardly two stones' throw in advance, lay a 
mass of rock, split as into a gateway. Through that 



THE SPANISH NUN. 247 

opening it now became probable that the road was ly- 
ing. Hurrying forward, she passed within the natural 
gates — gates of paradise they were. Ah, what a vista 
did tliat gateway expose before her dazzled eye ! what 
a revelation of heavenly promise ! Full two miles long 
stretched a long, narrow glen, every where descending, 
and in many parts rapidly. All was now placed be- 
yond a doubt. She vms descending, for hours, per- 
haps, had been descending, insensibly, the mighty stair- 
case. Yes, Kate is leaving behind her the kingdom of 
frost and the victories of death. Two miles farther 
there may be rest, if there is not shelter. And very 
soon, as the crest of her newborn happiness, she distin- 
guished at the other end of that rocky vista a pavilion- 
shaped mass of dark-green foliage — a belt of trees, 
such as we see in the lovely parks of England, but 
islanded by a screen (though not every where occupied 
by the usurpations) of a thick, bushy undergrowth. 
verdure of dark olive foliage, offered suddenly to faint- 
ing eyes as if by some winged patriarchal herald of 
wrath relenting, — solitary Arab's tent rising with saint- 
ly signals of peace in the dreadful desert, — must Kate 
indeed die even yet whilst she sees but cannot reach 
you? Outpost on the frontier of man's dominions, 
standing within life, but looking out upon everlasting 
death, wilt thou hold up the anguish of thy mocking 
invitation only to betray ? Never, perhaps, in this 
world was the line so exquisitely grazed that parts sal- 
vation and ruin. As the dove to her dovecot from the 
swooping hawk, as the Christian pinnace to Christian 
batteries from the bloody Mahometan corsair, so flew, 
so tried to fly, towards the anchoring thickets, that, 



248 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

alas ! could not weigh their anchors and make sail to 
meet her, the poor, exhausted Kate from the vengeance 
of pursuing frost. 

And she reached them. Staggering, fainting, reeling, 
she entered beneath the canopy of umbrageous trees. 
But, as oftentimes the Hebrew fugitive to a city of ref- 
uge, flying for his life before the avenger of blood, was 
pressed so hotly, that, on entering the archway of what 
seemed to him the heavenly city gate, as he kneeled in 
deep thankfulness to kiss its holy, merciful shadow, he 
could not rise again, but sank instantly with infant weak- 
ness into sleep, — sometimes to wake no more, — so 
sank, so collapsed upon the ground, without power to 
choose her couch, and with little prospect of ever rising 
again to her feet, the martial nun. She lay, as luck had 
ordered it, with her head screened by the undergrowth 
of bushes from any gales that might arise ; she lay ex- 
actly as she sank, with her eyes up to heaven. And 
thus it was that the nun saw, before falling asleep, the 
two sights that upon earth are fittest for the closing 
eyes of a nun, whether destined to open again or to close 
forever. She saw the interlacing of boughs overhead, 
forming a dome that seemed like the dome of a cathe- 
dral. She saw through the fretwork of the foliage 
another dome, far beyond — the dome of an evening sky 
— the dome of some heavenly cathedral not built with 
hands. She saw upon this upper dome the vesper lights, 
all alive with pathetic grandeur of coloring from a sun- 
set that had just been rolling down like a chorus. 
She had not till now consciously observed the time of 
day : whether it were morning, or whether it were 
afternoon, in her confusion she had not distinctly known . 



THE SPANISH NUN. 249 

But now she whispered to herself, '' It is evening;^'' 
and what lurked half unconsciously in these words 
might be : " The sun, that rejoices, has finished his daily 
toil; man, that labors, has finished his; I, that sufi'er, 
have finished mine." 

All night long she slept in her verdurous St. Ber- 
nard's hospice without awaking ; and whether she would 
evei' awake seemed to depend upon an accident. The 
slumber that towered above her brain was like that 
fluctuating, silvery column which stands in scientific 
tubes — sinking, rising, deepening, lightening, contract- 
ing, expanding ; or like the mist that sits through sultry 
afternoons upon the river of the American St. Peter, 
sometimes rarefying for minutes into sunny gauze, some- 
times condensing for hours into palls of funeral darkness. 
You fancy that, after twelve liours of any sleep, she 
must have been refreshed ; better, at least, than she was 
last night. Ah, but sleep is not always sent upon mis- 
sions of refreshment ; sleep is sometimes the secret 
chamber in which Death arranges his machinery : sleep 
is sometimes that deep, mysterious atmosphere in which 
the human spirit is slowly unsettling its wings for flight 
from earthly tenements. It is now eight o'clock in the 
morning ; and, to all appearance, if Kate should re- 
ceive no aid before noon, when next the sun is depart- 
ing to his rest, Kate will be departing to hers ; when 
next the sun is holding out his golden Christian signal 
to man that the hour is come for letting his anger go 
down, Kate will be sleeping away forever into the arms 
of brotherly forgiveness. 

Kate was ever lucky, though ever unfortunate ; and 
the world, being of my opinion, that Kate was worth 
11* 



250 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

saving, made up its mind, about half past eight o'clock 
in the morning, to save her. Just at that time, when 
the night was over and its sufferings were hidden in one 
of those intermitting gleams that for a moment or two 
lightened the clouds of her slumber, Kate's dull ear 
caught a sound that for years had spoken a familiar 
language to her. What was it ? It was the sound, 
though muffled and deadened, like the ear that heard 
it, of horsemen advancing. Interpreted by the tumul- 
tuous dreams of Kate, was it the cavalry of Spain, 
at whose head so often she had charged the bloody In- 
dian scalpers ? Was it, according to the legend of an- 
cient days, cavalry that had been sown by her brother's 
blood, cavalry that rose from the ground on an inquest 
of retribution, and were racing up the Andes to seize 
her ? Her dreams, that had opened sullenly to the 
sound, waited for no answer, but closed again into pom- 
pous darkness. Happily the horsemen had caught the 
glimpse of some bright ornament, clasp, or aigulet, on 
Kate's dress. They were hunters and foresters from 
below — servants in the household of a beneficent lady ; 
and, in some pursuit of flying game, had wandered be- 
yond their ordinary limits. Struck by the sudden scin- 
tillation from Kate's dress played upon by the morning 
sun, they rode up to the thicket. Great was their sur- 
prise, great their pity, to see a young officer in uniform 
stretched within the bushes upon the ground, and per- 
haps dying. Borderers from childhood on this dread- 
ful frontier, sacred to winter and death, they understood 
the case at once. They dismounted ; and with the ten- 
derness of women, raising the poor frozen cornet in their 
arms, washed her temples with brandy, whilst one, at 



THE SPANISH NUN. 251 

intervals, suffered a few drops to trickle within her lips. 
As the restoration of a warm bed was now most likely 
to be successful, they lifted the helpless stranger upon 
a horse, walking on each side with supporting arms. 
Once again our Kate is in the saddle — once again a 
Spanish caballador. But Kate's bridle hand is deadly 
cold ; and her spurs, that she had never unfastened 
since leaving the monastic asylum, hung as idle as the 
flapping sail that fills unsteadily with the breeze upon 
a stranded ship. 

This procession had some miles to go, and over diffi- 
cult ground ; but at length it reached the forest-like 
park and the chateau of the wealthy proprietress. 
Kate was still half frozen and speechless except at 
intervals. Heavens ! can this corpselike, languishing 
young woman be the Kate that once in her radiant 
girlhood rode with a handful of comrades into a column 
of two thousand enemies ; that saw her comrades die ; 
that persisted when all were dead ; that tore from the 
heart of all resistance the banner of her native Spain ? 
Chance and change have " written strange defeatures 
in her face." Much is changed ; but some things are 
not changed : there is still kindness that overflows with 
pity ; there is still helplessness that asks for this pity with- 
out a voice. She is now received by a senora not less 
kind than that maternal aunt who, on the night of her 
birth, first welcomed her to a loving home ; and she, 
the heroine of Spain, is herself as helpless now as that 
little lady who, then at ten minutes of age, was kissed 
and blessed by all the household of St. Sebastian. 

Let us suppose Kate placed in a warm bed ; let us 
suppose her in a few hours recovering steady conscious- 



252 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

ness ; in a few days recovering some power of self 
support ; in a fortnight able to seek the gay saloon, 
where the senora was sitting alone, and rendering 
thanks, with that deep sincerity which ever character- 
ized our wildhearted Kate, for the critical services re- 
ceived from that lady and her establishment. 

This lady, a widow, was what the French call a me- 
tiss^ the Spaniards a mestizza ; that is, the daughter 
of a genuine Spaniard and an Indian mother. I shall 
call her simply a Creole, which will indicate her want of 
pure Spanish blood significautly to explain her deference 
for those who had it. She was a kind, liberal woman ; 
rich rather more than needed where there were no 
opera boxes to rent ; a widow about fifty years old in 
the wicked world's account, some forty-four in her 
own ; and happy, above all, in the possession of a most 
lovely daughter, whom even the wicked world did not 
accuse of more than sixteen years. Tliis daughter, 

Juana, was . But stop : let her open the door of 

the saloon in which the senora and the cornet are con- 
versing, and speak for herself. She did so, after an 
hour had passed; which length of time, to her, that 
never had any business whatever in her innocent life, 
seemed sufficient to settle the business of the old world 
and the new. Had Pietro Diaz (as Catalina now call- 
ed herself) been really a Peter, and not a sham Peter, 
what a vision of loveliness would have rushed upon his 
sensibilities as the door opened ! Do not expect me to 
describe her ; for which, however, there are materials 
extant, sleeping in archives, where they have slept for 
two hundred and twenty years. It is enough that she 
is reported to have united the stately tread of Anda- 



THE SPANISH NUN. 253 

lusian women with the innocent voluptuousness of Pe- 
ruvian eyes. As to her complexion and figure, be it 
known that Juana's father was a gentleman from Gre- 
nada, having in his veins the grandest blood of all this 
earth, blood of Goths and Yandals, tainted (for which 
Heaven be thanked ! ) twice over with blood of Arabs 
— once through Moors, once through Jews ; whilst 
from her grandmother Juana drew the deep subtle mel- 
ancholy and the beautiful contours of limb which belong 
to the Indian race — a race destined silently and slow- 
ly to fade from the earth. No awkwardness was, or 
could be, in this antelope, when gliding with forest 
grace into the room ; no townbred shame ; nothing but 
the unaffected pleasure of one who wishes to speak a 
fervent welcome, but knows not if she ought — the as- 
tonishment of a Miranda, bred in utter solitude, when 
first beholding a princely Ferdinand ; and just so much 
reserve as to remind you that, if Catalina thought fit to 
dissemble her sex, she did not. And consider, reader, 
if you look back and are a great arithmetician, that, 
whilst the senora had only fifty per cent, of Spanish 
blood, Juana had seventy-five ; so that her Indian mel- 
ancholy, after all, was swallowed up for the present by 
her Yandal, by her Arab, by her Spanish fire. 

Catalina, seared as she was by the world, has left it 
evident in her memoirs that she was touched more than 
she wished to be by this innocent child. Juana formed 
a brief lull for Catalina in her too stormy existence ; 
and if for her in this life the sweet reality of a sister 
had been possible, here was the sister she would have 
chosen. On the other hand, what might Juana think 
of the cornet ? To have been thrown upon the kind 



254 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

hospitalities of her native home, to have been rescued 
by her mother's servants from that fearful death which, 
lying but a few miles off, had filled her nursery with 
traditionary tragedies, — that was sufficient to create 
an interest in the stranger. But his bold martial de- 
meanor, his yet youthful style of beauty, his frank 
manners, his animated conversation that reported a 
hundred contests with suffering and peril, wakened for 
the first time her admiration. Men she had never seen 
before, except menial servants or a casual priest ; but 
here was a gentleman, young like herself, that rode in 
the cavalry of Spain ; that carried the banner of the 
only potentate whom Peruvians knew of — the King 
of the Spains and the Indies ; that had doubled Cape 
Horn ; that had crossed the Andes ; that had suffered 
shipwreck ; that had rocked upon fifty storms ; and had 
wrestled for life through fifty battles. 

The reader knows all that followed. The sisterly 
love which Catalina did really feel for this young moun- 
taineer was inevitably misconstrued. Embarrassed, but 
not able, from sincere affection, or almost in bare pro- 
priety, to refuse such expressions of feeling as corres- 
ponded to the artless and involuntary kindnesses of the 
ingenuous Juana, one day the cornet was surprised by 
mamma in the act of encircling her daughter's waist 
with his martial arm, although waltzing was premature 
by at least two centuries in Peru. She taxed him in 
stantly with dishonorably abusing her confidence. The 
cornet made but a bad defence. He muttered some- 
thing about '^ fraternal affection^'* about "esteem," 
and a great deal of metaphysical words that are des- 
tined to remain untranslated in their original Spanish. 



THE SPANISH NUN. 255 

The good senom, though she could boast of only forty- 
four years' experience, was not altogether to be " had''' 
in that fashion : she was as learned as if she had been fif- 
ty ; and she brought matters to a speedy crisis. "- You are 
a Spaniard," she said, "a gentleman, therefore; re- 
member that you are a gentleman. This very night, if 
your intentions are not serious, quit my house. Go to 
Tucuman ; you shall command my horses and servants ; 
but stay no longer to increase the sorrow that already 
you will have left behind you. My daughter loves you. 
That is sorrow enough, if you are trifling with us ; but 
if not, and you also love Aer, and can be happy in our 
solitary mode of life, stay with us — stay forever. 
Marry Juana with my free consent. I ask not for 
wealth. Mine is sufficient for you both." The cornet 
protested that the honor was one never contemplated 

by him — that it was too great — that But of 

course, reader, you know that " gammon " flourishes in 
Peru amongst the silver mines as well as in some more 
boreal lands that produce little better than copper and 
tin. " Tin," however, has its uses. The delighted 
senora overruled all objections, great and small ; and 
she confirmed Juana's notion, that the business of two 
worlds could be transacted in an hour, by settling her 
daughter's future happiness in exactly twenty minutes. 
The poor, weak Catalina, not acting now in any spirit 
of recklessness, grieving sincerely for the gulf that was 
opening before her, and yet shrinking efi'eminately from 
the momentary shock that would be inflicted by a firm 
adherence to her duty, clinging to the anodyne of a 
short delay, allowed herself to be installed as the lover 
of Juana. Considerations of convenience, however, 



256 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

postponed the marriage. It was requisite to make 
various purchases ; and for this it was requisite to visit 
Tucuman, where also the marriage ceremony could be 
performed with more circumstantial splendor. To Tu- 
cuman, therefore, after some weeks' interval, the whole 
party repaired ; and at Tucuman it was that the tragi- 
cal events arose which, whilst interrupting such a 
mockery forever, left the poor Juana still happily de- 
ceived, and never believing for a moment that hers was 
a rejected or a deluded heart. 

Kate loved society and sought it at Tucuman among 
some Portuguese who happened to be there. A quarrel 
arose between one of these Portuguese and Catalina, 
and they resorted to arms. Catalina was so unfortunate 
as to run her sword through her opponent. Escape 
was impossible. Our Kate was seized by the corregidor 
and four alguazils and thrown into prison. 

A party trial, in which two false witnesses appeared 
against Kate, ended in her condemnation. She was 
sentenced to be executed in the public square. 

Catalina would not confess her crime, and after eight 
days confinement in prison, tlie principal judge issued 
his warrant for the execution. 

Accordingly, as the sun went down, the sad procession 
formed within the prison. Into the great square of 
Tucuman it moved, where the scaffold had been built 
and the whole city had assembled for the spectacle. 
Catalina steadily ascended the ladder of the scaffold ; 
even then she resolved not to benefit by revealing her 
sex ; even then it was that she expressed her scorn for 
the lubberly executioner's mode of tying a knot ; did 
it herself in a " ship shape," orthodox manner ; received 



THE SPANISH NUN. 257 

in return the enthusiastic plaudits of the crowd, and so 
far ran the risk of precipitating her fate ; for the timid 
magistrates, fearing a rescue from the impetuous mob, 
angrily ordered the executioner to finish the scene. 
The clatter of a galloping horse, however, at this instant 
forced them to pause. The crowd opened a road for 
the agitated horseman, who was the bearer of an order 
from the president of La Plata to suspend the execution 
until two prisoners could be examined. The whole was 
the work of the senora and her daughter. The elder 
lady, having gathered informations against the witnesses, 
had pursued them to La Plata. There, by her influence 
with the governor, they were arrested, recognized as 
old malefactors, and, in their terror, had partly con- 
fessed their perjury. Catalina was removed to La Pla- 
ta ; solemnly acquitted ; and, by the advice of the 
president, for the present the connection with the seno- 
ra's family was postponed indefinitely. 

Now was the last adventure approaching that ever 
Catalina should see in the new world. Some fine sights 
she may yet see in Europe, but nothing after this 
(which she has recorded) in America. 

The senora — and, observe, whatever kindness she 
does to Catalina speaks secretly from two hearts, her 
own and Juana's — had, by the advice of Mr. President 
Mendonia, given sufficient money for Catalina's travel- 
ling expenses. So far well. But Mr. M. chose to add 
a little codicil to this bequest of the senora's, never sug- 
gested by her or by her daughter. " Pray," said this 
inquisitive president, who surely might have found busi- 
ness enough in La Plata, " pray, Senor Pietro Diaz, 
did you ever live at Concepcion ? and were you ever ao 



258 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

quainted therewith Senor Miguel de Erauso ? That 
maa, sir, was my friend." 

From my kindness for poor Kate, I feel uncharitably 
towards the president for advising Senor Pietro, alias 
Kate, " to travel for his health." What had he to do 
with people's health ? However, Mr. Peter, as he had 
pocketed the senora's money, thought it right to pocket 
also the advice that accompanied its payment. That he 
might be in a condition to do so, he went off to buy a 
horse. He was in luck to-day ; for, beside money and 
advice, he obtained, at a low rate, a horse both beautiful 
and serviceable for a journey. To Paz it was, a city 
of prosperous name, that the cornet first moved. But 
Paz did not fulfil the promise of its name ; for it laid the 
grounds of a feud that drove our Kate out of America. 

Her first adventure was a bagatelle, and fitter for a 
jest book than a history ; yet it proved no jest either, 
since it led to the tragedy that followed. Piding into 
Paz, our gallant standard bearer and her bonny black 
horse drew all eyes, comme de raison^ upon their sepa- 
rate charms. This was inevitable amongst the indolent 
population of a Spanish town, and Kate was used to it ; 
but, having recently had a little too much of the public 
attention, she felt nervous on remarking two soldiers 
eyeing the handsome horse and the handsome rider with 
an attention that seemed too solemn for mere cesthetics. 
However, Kate was not the kind of person to let any 
thing dwell on her spirits, especially if it took the shape 
of impudence ; and, whistling gayly, she was riding 
forward, when who should cross her path but the alcalde ! 
Ah, alcalde, you see a person now that has a mission 
against you, though quite unknown to herself. He looked 



THE SPANISH XUN. 259 

60 sternly that Kate asked if his worship had any com- 
mands. " These men," said the alcalde, " these two 
?oldiers, say that this horse is stolen." Kate was ner- 
vous, but never disconcerted. In a moment she had 
twitched off a saddle cloth on which she sat, and throw- 
ing it over the horse's head, so as to cover up all be- 
tween the ears and the mouth, she replied, " that she 
had bought and paid for the horse at La Plata. But 
now, your worship, if this horse has really been stolen 
from these men, they must know well of which eye it is 
blind ; for it can be only in the right eye or the left." 
One of the soldiers cried out instantly that it was the 
left eye ; but the other said, " No, no ; you forget ; it's 
the right." Kate maliciously called attention to this 
little schism. But the men said, " Ah, that was nothing 
— they were hurried ; but now, on recollecting them- 
selves, they were agreed that it was the left eye." Did 
they stand to that ? " 0, yes, positive they were ; left 
eye — left." 

Upon which our Kate, twitching off the horse cloth, 
said gayly to the magistrate, '' Now, sir, please to ob- 
serve that this horse has nothing the matter with either 
eye." And in fact it was so. Then his worship ordered 
his alguazils to apprehend the two witnesses, who posted 
oft' to bread and water, with other reversionary advan- 
tages, whilst Kate rode in quest of the best dinner that 
Paz could furnish. 

This alcaide's acquaintance, however, was not destined 
to drop here. Something had appeared in the young 
cabellero^s bearing which made it painful to have ad- 
dressed him with harshness or for a moment to have 
entertained such a charge against such a person. Ho 



260 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

despatched his cousin, therefore, Don Antonio Calderon, 
to offer his apologies, and at the same time to request 
that the stranger, whose rank and quality he regretted 
not to have known, would do him the honor to come 
and dine with him. This explanation, and the fact that 
Don Antonio had already proclaimed his own position 
as cousin to the magistrate and nephew to the Bishop 
of Cuzco, obliged Catalina to say, after thanking the 
gentlemen for their obliging attentions, " I myself hold 
the rank of alferez in the service of his Catholic ma- 
jesty. I am a native of Biscay ; and I am now repair- 
ing to Cuzco on private business." "■ To Cuzco ! " ex- 
claimed Don Antonio. "How very fortunate! My 
cousin is a Basque like you ; and, like you, he starts for 
Cuzco to-morrow morning ; so that, if it is agreeable to 
you, Senor Alferez, we will travel together." It was 
settled that they should. But the journey to Cuzco was 
made in a very different manner from that which Kate 
had anticipated, and came near a fatal termination. 

Kate got into a quarrel in which she killed the al- 
calde. The alguazils came to the rescue. They and 
the servants of the alcalde pressed furiously on Kate, 
who now again was fighting for life. 

Against such odds, she was rapidly losing ground ; 
when in an instant, on the opposite side of the street, 
the great gates of the episcopal palace rolled open. 
Thither it was that Caideron's servant had fled. The 
bishop and his attendants hurried across. " Senor Ca- 
ballador," said the bishop, " in the name of the Virgin, 
I enjoin you to surrender your sword." " My lord," 
said Kate, " I dare not do it with so many enemies 
about me." "But I," replied the bishop, "become 



THE SPANISH NUN. 261 

answerable to the law for your safekeeping." Upon 
which, with filial reverence, all parties dropped their 
swords. Kate being severely wounded, the bishop led 
her into his palace. In an instant came the catastrophe. 
Kate's discovery could no longer be delayed ; the blood 
flowed too rapidly ; the wound was in her bosom. She 
requested a private interview with the bishop. All was 
known in a moment ; for surgeons and attendants were 
summoned hastily, and Kate had fainted. The good 
bishop pitied her and had her attended in his palace ; 
then removed to a convent ; then to a second at Lima ; 
and, after many months had passed, his report to the 
Spanish government at home of all the particulars drew 
from the King of Spain and from the pope an order that 
the nun should be transferred to Spain. 

Yes, at length the warrior lady, the blooming cornet, 
this nun that is so martial, this dragoon that is so lovely, 
must visit again the home of her childhood, which now 
for seventeen years she has not seen. All Spain, Por- 
tugal, Italy, rang with her adventures. Spain, from 
north to south, was frantic with desire to behold her 
fiery child, whose girlish romance, whose patriotic hero- 
ism, electrified the national imagination. The King 
of Spain must kiss his faithful daughter, that would not 
suff'er his banner to see dishonor. The pope must kiss 
his ivandtnng daughter, that henceforwards will be a 
lamb travelling back into the Christian fold. Potentates 
30 great as these, when they speak words of love, do 
not speak in vain. All was forgiven — the sacrilege, 
the bloodshed, the flight, and the scorn of St. Peter's 
keys. The pardons were made out, were signed, were 
sealed ; and the chanceries of earth were satisfied. 



262 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

Ah, what a day of sorrow and of joy was that one 
day, in the first week of November, 1624, when the 
returning Kate drew near to the shore of Andalusia ; 
when, descending into the ship's barge, she was rowed 
to the piers of Cadiz by bargemen in the royal liveries ; 
when she saw every ship, street, house, convent, church, 
crowded, like a day of judgment, with human faces, — 
with men, with women, with children, — all bending 
the liglits of their flashing and their loving eyes upon 
herself ! Forty myriads of people had gathered in Cadiz 
alone. All Andalusia had turned out to receive her. 
Ah, what joy, if she had not looked back to the Andes, 
to their dreadful summits, and their more dreadful feet ! 
Ah, what sorrow, if she had not been forced, by music, 
and endless banners, and triumphant clamors, to turn 
away from the Andes to the joyous shore which she ap- 
proached ! 

Upon this shore stood, ready to receive her, in front 
of all this mighty crowd, the prime minister of Spain, 
the same Conde Olivarez who but one year before had 
been so haughty and so defying to our haughty and de- 
fying Duke of Buckingham. But a year ago the Prince 
of Wales was in Spain ; and he also was welcomed with 
triumph and great joy, but not with the hundredth part 
of that enthusiasm which now met the returning nun ; 
and Olivarez, that had spoken so roughly to the Eng- 
lish duke, to her " was sweet as summer." Through 
endless crowds of festive compatriots he conducted her 
to the king. The king folded her in his arms, and could 
never be satisfied with listening to her. He sent for 
her continually to his presence ; he delighted in her con- 
versation, so new, so natural, so spirited ; he settled a 



THE SPANISH NUN. 263 

pension upon her at that time, of unprecedented amount 
in the case of a subaltern officer ; and by Ids desire, be- 
cause the year 1625 was a year of jubilee, she departed 
in a few months from Madrid to Rome. She went 
through Barcelona, there and every where welcomed as 
the lady whom the king delighted to honor. She 
travelled to Rome ; and all doors flew open to receive 
her. She was presented to his holiness, with letters 
from his most Catholic majesty. But letters there need- 
ed none. The pope admired her as much as all before 
had done. He caused her to recite all her adventures ; 
and what he loved most in her account was the sincere 
and sorrowing spirit in which she described herself, as 
neither better nor worse than she had been. Neither 
proud was Kate, nor sycophantishly and falsely humble. 
Urban VIII. it was that then filled the chair of St. Peter. 
He did not neglect to raise his daughter's thoughts from 
earthly things ; he pointed her eyes to the clouds that 
were above the dome of St. Peter's Cathedral ; he told 
her what the cathedral had told her in the gorgeous 
clouds of the Andes and the vesper lights, how sweet a 
thing, how divine a thing, it was, for Christ's sake, to 
forgive all injuries, and how he trusted that no more 
she would think of bloodshed. 

From Rome, Kate returned to Spain. She even 
went to St. Sebastian's, to the city, but — whether it 
was that her heart failed her or not — never to tho 
convent. She roamed up and down ; every where she 
was welcome, every where an honored guest, but every 
where restless. The poor and humble never ceased 
from their admiration of her ; and amongst the rich 
and aristocratic of Spain, with the king at their head, 



264 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

Kate found especial love from two classes of men. The 
cardinals and bishops all doted upon her, as their daugh- 
ter that was returning. The military men all doted 
upon her, as their sister that was retiring. 

You will ask me, What became of Kate ? What 
was her end ? Ah, reader ! but, if I answer that ques- 
tion, you will say I have not answered it. If I tell you 
that secret, you will say that the secret is still hidden. 
Yet, because I have promisod, and because you will be 
angry if I do not, let me do my best ; and bad is the 
best. After ten years of restlessness in Spain, with 
thoughts always turning back to the Andes, Kate heard 
of an expedition on the point of sailing to Spanish 
America. All soldiers knew her^ so that she had in- 
formation of every thing that stirred in camps. Men 
of the highest military rank Avere going out with the 
expedition ; but they all loved Kate as a sister, and 
were delighted to hear that she would join their mess 
on board sliip. This ship, with others, sailed, whither 
finally bound I really forget ; but, on reaching America, 
all the expedition touched at Vera Cruz. Thither a 
great crowd of the military went on shore ; the leading 
officers made a separate party for the same purpose. 
Their intention was to have a gay, happy dinner, after 
their long confinement to a ship, at the chief hotel; 
and happy in perfection it could not be unless Kate 
would consent to join it. She, that was ever kind to 
brother soldiers, agreed to do so. She descended into 
the boat along with them, and in twenty minutes the 
boat touched the shore. All the bevy of gay, laughing 
officers, junior and senior, like schoolboys escaping 
from school, jumped on shore, and walked hastily, as 



THE SPANISH NUN. 265 

their time was limited, up to the hotel. Arriving there, 
all turned round in eagerness, saying, " Where is our 
dear Kate ? " Ah, yes, my dear Kate, at that solemn 
moment, where, indeed, were you ? She had certainly 
taken her seat in the boat — that was sure. Nobody, 
in the general confusion, was certain of having seen 
her on coming ashore. The sea was searched for her — 
the forests were ransacked. The sea made no answer — 
the forests gave up no sign. I have a conjecture of my 
own ; but her brother soldiers were lost in sorrow and 
confusion, and could never arrive even at a conjecture. 
That happened two hundred and fourteen years ago. 
Here is the brief sum of all : This nun sailed from 
Spain to Peru ; and she found no rest for the sole of 
her foot. This nun sailed back from Peru to Spain ; 
and she found no rest for the agitations of her heart. 
This nun sailed again from Spain to America ; and she 
found — the rest which all of us find. But where it 
was could never be made known to the father of Span- 
ish camps that sat in Madrid, nor to Kate's spiritual 
fatlier that sat in Rome. Known it is to the great 
Father that once whispered to Kate on the Andes ; but 
else it has been a secret for two centuries ; and to man 
it remains a secret forever and ever. 



12 



THE EASEDALE EOMANCE. 

The little valley of Easedale, which, and the neigh- 
borhood of which, were the scenes of these interesting 
events, is, on its own account, one of the most impres- 
sive solitudes amongst the mountains of the lake dis- 
trict ; and I must pause to describe it. Easedale is im- 
pressive, first, as a solitude ; for the depth of the 
seclusion is brought out and forced more pointedly upon 
the feelings by the thin scattering of houses over its 
sides, and the surface of what may be called its floor. 
These are not above five or six at the most ; and one, 
the remotest of the whole, was untenanted for all the 
thirty years of my acquaintance with the place. Sec- 
ondly, it is impressive from the excessive loveliness 
which adorns its little area. This is broken up into 
small fields and miniature meadows, separated not — as 
too often happens, with sad injury to the beauty of 
the lake country — by stone walls, but sometimes by 
little hedge-rows, sometimes by little sparkling, pebbly 
" beck," lustrous to the very bottom, and not too broad 
for a child's flying leap ; and sometimes by wild self- 
sown woodlands of birch, alder, holly, mountain ash, 
and hazel, that meander through the valley, intervening 
the different estates with natural sylvan marches, and 
giving cheerfulness in winter, by the bright scarlet of 
their barrier. It is the character of all the northern 
English valleys, as I have already remarked — and it is 
a character first noticed by Wordsworth — that they 
(266) 



THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 267 

assume, in their bottom areas, the level floor-like shape, 
making everywhere a direct angle with the surrounding 
hills, and definitely marking out the margin of their 
outlines ; whereas the Welsh valleys have too often the 
glaring imperfection of the basin shape, which allows 
no sense of any absolute valley surface ; the hills are 
already commencing at the very centre of what is called 
the level area. The little valley of Easedale is, in this 
respect, as highly finished as in every other ; and in the 
Westmoreland spring, which may be considered May and 
the earlier half of June, whilst the grass in the mead- 
ows is yet short from the habit of keeping the sheep on 
it until a much later period than elsewhere, (viz. until 
the mountains are so far cleared of snow, and the proba- 
bility of storms, as to make it safe to send them out on 
their summer migration,) the little fields of Easedale 
have the most lawny appearance, and from the humidity 
of the Westmoreland climate, the most verdant that it 
is possible to imagine ; and on a gentle vernal day — 
when vegetation has been far enough advanced to bring 
out the leaves, an April sun gleaming coyly through the 
clouds, and genial April rain gently pencilling the light 
spray of the wood with tiny pearl drops — I have often 
thought, whilst looking with silent admiration upon this 
exquisite composition of landscape, with its miniature 
fields running up like forest glades into miniature woods ; 
its little columns of smoke, breathing up like incense to 
the household gods, from the hearths of two or three 
picturesque cottages — abodes of simple primitive man- 
ners, and what, from personal knowledge, I will call 
humble virtue — whilst my eyes rested on this charming 
combination of lawns and shrubberies, I have thought 



268 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

that if a sceoe on this earth could deserve to be scaled 
up, like the valley of Rasselas, against the intrusion of 
the world — if there were one to which a man would 
willingly surrender himself a prisoner for the years of 
a long life — that it is this Easedale — which would 
justify the choice, and recompense the sacrifice. But 
there is a third advantage possessed by this Easedale, 
above other rival valleys, in the sublimity of its moun- 
tain barriers. In one of its many rocky recesses is seen 
a " force," (such is the local name for a cataract,) white 
with foam, descending at all seasons with respectable 
strength, and, after the melting of snows, with an Al- 
pine violence. Follow the leading of this " force" for 
three quarters of a mile, and you come to a little moun- 
tain lake, locally termed a " tarn" the very finest and 
most gloomy sublime of its class. From this tarn it 
was, I doubt not, though applying it to another, that 
Wordsworth drew the circumstances of his general 
description : — 

•' Thither the rainbow comes, the cloud, 
And mists that spread the flying shroud; 

And winds 
That, if they could, would hurry past : 
But that enormous barrier binds it fast. 

&c. &c. &c. 

The rocks repeat the raven's croak. 
In symphony austere." 

And far beyond this " enormous barrier," that thus im- 
prisons the very winds, tower upwards the aspiring 
heads (usually enveloped in cloud and mist) of Glara- 
mara. Bow Fell, and the other fells of Langdale Head 
and Borrowdale. Finally, superadded to the other 
circumstances of solitude, arising out of the rarity of 



THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 269 

human life, and of the signs which mark the goings on 
of human life, — two other accidents there are of Ease- 
dale, which sequester it from the world, and inten^;ify 
its depth of solitude beyond what could well be looked 
for or thought possible in any vale within a district so 
beaten by modern tourists. One is, that it is a cham- 
ber within a chamber, or rather a closet within a cliam- 
ber — a chapel within a cathedral — a little private ora- 
tory within a chapel. For Easedale is, in fact, a de- 
pendency of Grasmere — a little recess lying within the 
same general basin of mountains, but partitioned off by 
a screen of rock and swelling uplands, so inconsider- 
able in height, that, when surveyed from the command- 
ing summits of Fairfield or Seat Scandal, they seem to 
subside into the level area, and melt into the general 
surface. But, viewed from below, these petty heights 
form a sufificient partition ; which is pierced, however, 
in two points — once by the little murmuring brook 
threading its silvery line onwards to the lake of Gras- 
mere, and again by a little rough lane, barely capable 
(and I think not capable in all points) of receiving a 
post-chaise. This little lane keeps ascending amongst 
wooded steeps for a quarter of a mile ; and then, by a 
downward course of a hundred yards or so, brings you 
to a point at which the little valley suddenly bursts 
upon you with as full a revelation of its tiny propor- 
tions, as the traversing of the wooded back-grounds will 
permit. The lane carries you at last to a little wooden 
bridge, practicable for pedestrians ; but, for carriages, 
even the doubtful road, already mentioned, ceases alto- 
gether : and this fact, coupled with the difficulty of 
suspecting such a lurking paradise from the high road 



270 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

through Grasinere, at every point of which the little 
hilly partition crowds up into one mass with the capital 
barriers in the rear, seeming in fact, not so much to blend 
with them as to be part of them, may account for the fortu- 
nate neglect of Ea^edale in the tourist's route ; and also 
because there is no one separate object, such as a lake 
or a splendid cataract, to bribe the interest of those 
who are hunting after sights ; for the " force" is com- 
paratively small, and the tarn is beyond the limits of 
the vale, as well as difficult of approach. 

One otlier circumstance there is about Easedale, which 
completes its demarcation, and makes it as entirely a 
landlocked little park, within a ring-fence of mountains, 
as ever human art, if rendered capable of dealing with 
mountains and their arrangement, could have contrived. 
The sole approach, as I have mentioned, is from Gras- 
mere ; and some one outlet there must inevitably be in 
every vale that can be interesting to a human occupant, 
since without water it would not be habitable ; and run- 
ning water must force an exit for itself, and, consequent- 
ly, an inlet for the world ; but, properly speaking, there 
is no other. For, when you explore the remoter end 
of the vale, at which you suspect some communication 
with the world outside, you find before you a most for- 
midable amount of climbing, the extent of which can 
hardly be measured where there is no solitary object of 
human workmanship or vestige of animal life, not a 
sheep-track even, not a shepherd's hovel, but rock and 
heath, heath and rock, tossed about in monotonous con- 
fusion. And, after the ascent is mastered, you descend 
into a second vale — long, narrow, sterile, known by 
the name of " Far Easedale : " from which point, if 



THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 271 

you could drive a tunnel below the everlasting hills, per- 
haps six or seven miles might bring you to the nearest 
habitation of man in Borrowdale ; but, crossing the 
mountains, the road cannot be less than twelve or four- 
teen, and in point of fatigue, at the least twenty. This 
long valley, which is really terrific at noon-day, from 
its utter loneliness and desolation, completes the de- 
fences of little sylvan Easedale. There is one door into 
it from the Grasmere side ; but that door is hidden ; 
and on every other quarter there is no door at all, nor 
any, the roughest, access, but what would demand a 
day's walking. 

Such is the solitude — so deep, so seventimes guarded 
and so rich in miniature beauty — of Easedale ; and in 
this solitude it was that George and Sarah Green, two 
poor and hard-working peasants, dwelt, with a numerous 
family of small children. Poor as they were, they had 
won the general respect of the neighborhood, from the un- 
complaining firmness with which they bore the hardships 
of their lot, and from the decent attire in which the 
good mother of the family contrived to send out her 
children to the Grasmere school. It is a custom, and 
a very ancient one, in Westmoreland — and I have seen 
the same usage prevailing in southern Scotland — that 
any sale by auction, whether of cattle, of farming pro- 
duce, farming stock, wood, or household furniture — 
and seldom a fortnight passes without something of the 
sort — forms an excuse for the good women, throughout 
the whole circumference of perhaps a dozen valleys, to 
" assemble at the place of sale with the nominal purpose 
of aiding the sale, or of buying something they may 
want. No doubt the real business of the sale attracts 



272 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

numbers; although of late years — that is, for the last 
twenty-five years, through which so many sales of fur- 
niture the most expensive, (hastily made by casual set- 
tlers, on the wing for some fresher novelty,) — have 
made this particular article almost a drug in the coun- 
try ; and the interest in such sales has greatly declined. 
But, in 1807, this fever of founding villas or cottages 
ornees, was yet only beginning ; and a sale, except it 
were of the sort exclusively interesting to farming men, 
was a kind of general intimation to the country, from 
the owner of the property, that he would, on that after- 
noon be " at home " for all comers, and hoped to see as 
large an attendance as possible. Accordingly, it was 
the almost invariable custom — and often, too, when 
the parties were far too poor for such an effort of hos- 
pitality — to make ample provision, not of eatables, but 
of liquor, for all who came. Even a gentleman, who 
should happen to present himself on such a festal occa- 
sion, by way of seeing the " humors " of the scene, was 
certain of meeting the most cordial welcome. The good 
woman of the house more particularly testified her sense 
of the honor done to her house, and was sure to seek 
out some cherished and solitary article of china — a 
wreck from a century back — in order that he, being a 
porcelain man amongst so many delf men and women, 
might have a porcelain cup to drink from. 

The main secret of attraction at these sales — many 
a score of which I have attended — was the social ren- 
dezvous thus effected between parties so remote from 
each other, (either by real distance, or by the virtual 
distance which results from a separation by difficult 
tracts of hilly country,) that, in fact, without some such 



THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 273 

common object, and oftentimes something like a bisec- 
tion of the interval between them, they would not be 
likely to hear of each other for months, or actually to 
meet for years. This principal charm of the " gather- 
ing," seasoned, doubtless, to many by the certain antici- 
pation that the whole budget of rural scandal would 
then and there be opened, was not assuredly diminished 
to the men by the anticipation of excellent ale, (usually 
brewed six or seven weeks before, in preparation for 
the event,) and possibly of still more excellent pow- 
soivdy^ (a combination of ale, spirits, and spices ;) nor 
to the women by some prospect, not so inevitably fulfill- 
ed, but pretty certain in a liberal house, of communicat- 
ing their news over excellent tea. Even the auctioneer 
was always " part and parcel " of the mirth : he was 
always a rustic old humorist, a ^' character," and a jovial 
drunkard, privileged in certain good-humored liberties 
and jokes with all bidders, gentle or simple, and fur- 
nished with an ancient inheritance of jests appropriate 
to the articles offered for sale — jests that had, doubt- 
less, done their office from Elizabeth's golden days ; but 
no more on that account, failed of their expected effect, 
with either man or woman of this nineteenth century, 
than the sun fails to gladden the heart because it is that 
same old obsolete sun that has gladdened it for thousands 
of years. 

One thing, however, in mere justice to the poor in- 
digenous Dalesmen of Westmoreland and Cumberland, 
I am bound, in this place, to record, that often as I have 
been at these sales, and through many a year before 
even a scattering of gentry began to attend, yet so truo 
to the natural standard of politeness was the decorum 
12* 



274 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

aniformly maintained, even the old buffoon (as some- 
times he was) of an auctioneer never forget himself so 
far as to found upon any article of furniture a jest that 
could have called up a painful blush in any woman's 
face. He might, perhaps, go so far as to awaken a little 
rosy confusion upon some young bride's countenance, 
when pressing a cradle upon her attention : but never 
did I hear him utter, nor would he have been tolerated 
in uttering a scurrilous or disgusting jest, such as might 
easily have been suggested by something offered at a 
household sale. Such jests as these I heard for the 
first time, at a sale in Grasmere in 1814 ; and I am 
ashamed to say it, from some " gentlemen " of a great 
city. And it grieved me to see the effect, as it express- 
ed itself upon the manly faces of the grave Dalesmen 
^a sense of insult offered to their women, who met in 
confiding reliance upon the forbearance of the men, and 
upon their regard for the dignity of the female sex, this 
feeling struggling with the habitual respect they are in- 
clined to show towards what they suppose gentle blood 
and superior education. Taken generally, however, 
these were the most picturesque and festal meetings 
which the manners of the country produced. There you 
saw all ages and both sexes assembled : there you saw 
old men whose heads would have been studios for 
Guido ; there you saw the most colossal and stately 
figures amongst the young men that England has to 
show ; there the most beautiful young women. There 
it was that sometimes I saw a lovelier face than ever I 
shall see again : there it was that local peculiarities of 
usage or of language were best to be studied; there — 
at least in the earlier years of my residence in that dis- 



THE EASEDALE EOMANCE. 275 

trict • — that the social benevolence, the grave wisdom, 
the innocent mirth, and the neighborly kindness of the 
people, most delightfully expanded and expressed them- 
selves with the least reserve. 

To such a scene it was, to a sale of domestic furniture 
at the house of some proprietor on the point of giving 
up housekeeping, perhaps in order to live with a mar- 
ried son or daughter, that George and Sarah Green set 
forward in the forenoon of a day fated to be their last 
on earth. The sale was to take place in Langdale 
Head ; to which, from their own cottage in Easedale, 
it was possible in daylight, and supposing no mist upon 
the hills, to find out a short cut of not more than eight 
miles. By this route they went ; and notwithstanding 
the snow lay on the ground, they reached their destina- 
tion in safety. The attendance at the sale must have 
been diminished by the rigorous state of the weather ; 
but still the scene was a gay one as usual. Sarah 
Green, though a good and worthy woman in her matu- 
rer years, had been imprudent and — as the tender con- 
sideration of the country is apt to express it — " unfor- 
tunate " in her youth. She had an elder daughter who 
was illegitimate ; and I believe the father of this girl 
was dead. The girl herself was grown up ; and the 
peculiar solicitude of poor Sarah's maternal heart was 
at this time called forth on her behalf ; she wished to see 
her placed in a very respectable house, where the mistress 
was distinguished for her notable qualities and her suc- 
cess in forming good servants. This object, so important 
to Sarah Green in the narrow range of her cares, as in 
a more exalted family it might be to obtain a ship for a 
lieutenant that had passed as master and commander, 



276 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

or to get him '^ posted " — occupied her almost through- 
out the sale. A doubtful answer had been given to her 
application ; and Sarah was going about the crowd, and 
weaving her person in and out in order to lay hold of 
this or that intercessor, who might have, or might seem 
to have, some weight with the principal person concern- 
ed. 

This was the last occupation which is known to have 
stirred the pulses of her heart. An illegitimate child is 
everywhere, even in the indulgent society of Westmore- 
land Dalesmen, under some shade of discountenance; so 
that Sarah Green might consider her duty to be the 
stronger toward the child of her " misfortune." And 
she probably had another reason for her anxiety — as 
some words dropped by her on this evening led people 
to presume — in her conscientious desire to introduce 
her daughter into a situation less perilous than that which 
had compassed her own youthful steps with snares. If 
so, it is painful to know that the virtuous wish, whose 

" vital warmth 

Gave the last human motion to the heart," 

should not have been fulfilled. She was a woman of 
ardent and affectionate spirit, of which Miss Words- 
worth's memoir, or else her subsequent memorials in 
conversation, (I forget which), gave some circumstan- 
tial and affecting instances, which I cannot now recall 
with accuracy. This ardor it was, and her impassioned 
manner, that drew attention to what she did ; for other- 
wise, she was too poor a person to be important in the 
estimation of strangers, and, of all possible situations, to 
be important at a sale, where the public attention was 
naturally fixed upon the chief purchasers, and the at- 



THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 277 

tentiou of the purchasers, upon the chief competitors. 
Hence it happened, that, after she ceased to challenge 
notice by the emphasis of her solicitations for her 
daughter, she ceased to be noticed at all ; and nothing 
was recollected of her subsequent behavior until the 
time arrived for general separation. This time was 
considerably after sunset ; and the final recollections of 
the crowd with respect to George and Sarah Green, 
were, that, upon their intention being understood to re- 
trace their morning path and to attempt the perilous 
task of dropping down into Easedale from the moun- 
tains above Langdale Head, a sound of remonstrance 
arose from many quarters. However, at a moment 
when everybody was in a hurry of departure — and, to 
persons of their mature age, the opposition could not 
be very obstinate — party after party rode off ; the 
meeting melted away, or, as the northern phrase is, 
scaled ; and, at length, nobody was left of any weight 
that could pretend to influence the decision of elderly 
people. They quitted the scene, professing to obey 
some advice or other upon the choice of roads ; but, at 
as early a point as they could do so unobserved, began 
to ascend the hills, everywhere open from the rude car- 
riage way. After this, they were seen no more. They 
had disappeared into the cloud of death. Voices were 
heard some hours afterwards, from the mountains — 
voices, as some thought, of alarm ; others said, no — 
that it was only the voices of jovial people, carried by 
the wind into uncertain regions. The result was, that 
no attention was paid to the sounds. 

That night, in little peaceful Easedale, six children 
sat by a peat fire, expecting the return of tlieir parents, 



278 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

upon whom they depended for their daily bread. Let 
a day pass, and they were starved. Every sound was 
heard witli anxiety ; for all this was reported many a 
hundred times to Miss Wordsworth, and those who, like 
myself, were never weaned of hearing the details. 
Every sound, every echo amongst the hills was listened 
to for five hours — from seven to twelve. At length, 
the eldest girl of the family — about nine years old — 
told her little brothers and sisters to go to bed. They 
had been taught obedience ; and all of them, at the 
voice of their eldest sister, went off fearfully to their 
beds. What could be their fears, it is difficult to say ! 
they had no knowledge to instruct them in the dangers 
of the hills ; but the eldest sister always averred that 
they had a deep solicitude, as she herself had about 
their parents. Doubtless she had communicated her 
fears to them. Some time, in the course of the evening 
— but it was late and after midnight — the moon arose 
and shed a torrent of light upon the Langdale fells, 
which had already, long hours before, witnessed in 
darkness the death of their parents. It may be well 
here to cite Mr. Wordsworth's stanzas : — 

"Who weeps for strangers? Many wept 

For George and Sarah Green ; 
Wept for that pair's unhappy fate. 

Whose graves may here be seen. 

By night upon these stormy fells. 

Did wife and husband roam ; 
Six little ones at home had left. 

And could not find that home. 

For any dwelling-place of man 
As Yainly did they seek. 



THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 279 

He perished ; and a voice was heard — 
The widow's lonely shriek. 

Not many steps, and she was left 

A body without life — 
A few short steps were the chain that bound 

The husband to the wife. 

Now do these sternly-featured hills 

Look gently on this grave ; 
And quiet now are the depths of air. 

As a sea without a wave. 

But deeper lies the heart of peace 

In quiet more profound ; 
The heart of quietness is here 

Within this chux'chyard bound. 

And from all agony of mind 

It keeps them safe, and far 
From fear and grief, and from all need 

Of sun or guiding star. 

darkness of the grave ! how deep, 

After that living night — 
That last and dreary living one 

Of sorrow and affright ! 

sacred marriage bed of death, 

That keeps them side by side 
In bond of peace, in bond of love. 

That may not be untied ! " 

That night, and the following morning, came a fur- 
ther and a heavier fall of snow ; in consequence of 
which the poor children were completely imprison 
ed, and cut off from all possibility of communicating 
with their next neighbors. The brook was too much 
for them to leap ; and the little, crazy, wooden bridge 
could not be crossed or even approached with safety, 



280 BEA.UTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

from the drifting of the snow having made it impos- 
sible to ascertain the exact situation of some treacher- 
ous hole in its timbers, which, if trod upon, w^ould have 
let a small child drop through into the rapid waters. 
Their parents did not return. For some hours of the 
morning, the children clung to the hope that the ex- 
treme severity of the night had tempted them to sleep 
in Langdale ; but this hope forsook them as the day 
wore away. Their father, George Green, had served 
as a soldier, and was an active man, of ready resources, 
who would not, under any circumstances, have failed to 
force a road back to his family, had he been still living ; 
and this reflection, or rather semi-conscious feeling, 
which the awfulness of their situation forced upon the 
minds of all but the mere infants, taught them to feel 
the extremity of their danger. Wonderful it is to see 
the effect of sudden misery, sudden grief, or sudden 
fear, (where they do not utterly upset the faculties,) in 
sharpening the intellectual perceptions. Instances must 
have fallen in the way of most of us. And I have 
noticed frequently that even sudden and intense bodily 
pain is part of the machinery employed by nature for 
quickening the development of the mind. The percep- 
tions of infants are not, in fact, excited gradcUivi and 
continuously, but per saltum, and by unequal starts. 
At least, in the case of my own children, one and all, 
I have remarked, that, after any very severe fit of those 
peculiar pains to which the delicate digestive organs of 
most infants are liable, there always become apparent 
on the following day a very considerable increase of 
vital energy and of vivacious attention to the objects 
around them. The poor desolate children of Glentarn 



THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 281 

Ghyll, hourly becoming more ruefully convinced that 
they were orphans, gave many evidences of this awak- 
ing povv^er, as lodged, by a providential arrangement, 
in situations of trial that most require it. They huddled 
together, in the evening, round their hearth-fire of peats, 
and held their little councils upon what was to be done 
towards any chance — if chance remained — of yet 
giving aid to their parents ; for a slender hope had 
sprung up that some hovel or sheep-fold might have 
furnished them a screen (or, in Westmoreland phrase, 
a bield,) against the weather quarter of the storm, in 
which hovel they might be lying disabled or snowed up ; 
and, secondly, as regarded themselves, in what way they 
were to make known their situation, in case the snow 
should continue or increase ; for starvation stared them 
in the face, if they should be confined for many days to 
their house. 

Meantime, the eldest sister, little Agnes, though sadly 
alarmed, and feeling the sensation of eariness as twi- 
light came on, and she looked out from the cottage door 
to the dreadful fells, on which, too probably, her pa- 
rents were lying corpses, (and possibly not many hun- 
dred yards from tlieir own threshold,) yet exerted her- 
self to take all the measures which their own prospects 
made prudent. And she told Miss Wordsworth, that, 
in the midst of the oppression on her little spirit, 
from the vague ghostly terrors, she did not fail, how- 
ever, to draw some comfort from the consideration, that 
the very same causes which produced their danger in 
one direction, sheltered them from danger of another 
kind — such dangers as she knew, from books that she 
had read, would have threatened a little desolate flock 



282 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

of children in other parts of England ; that, if they 
could not get out into Grasmere, on the other hand, 
bad men, and wild seafaring foreigners, who sometimes 
passed along the high road in that vale, could not get 
to them ; and that, as to their neighbors, so far from 
having anything to fear in that quarter, their greatest 
apprehension was lest they might not be able to acquaint 
them with their situation ; but that, if that could be ac- 
complished, the very sternest amongst them were kind- 
hearted people, that would contend with each other for 
the privilege of assisting them. Somewhat cheered 
with these thoughts, and having caused all her brothers 
and sisters — except the two little things, not yet of a 
fit age — to kneel down and say the prayers which they 
had been taught, this admirable little maiden turned 
herself to every household task that could have proved 
useful to them in a long captivity. First of all, upon 
some recollection that the clock was nearly going down, 
she wound it up. Next, she took all the milk which re- 
mained from what the mother had provided for the 
children's consumption during her absence, and for the 
breakfast of the following morning — this luckily was 
still in sufficient plenty for two days' consumption, 
(skimmed or " blue " milk being only one half-penny 
a quart, and the quart a most redundant one, in Gras- 
mere) — this she took and scalded, so as to save it from 
turning sour. That done, she next examined the meal 
chest ; made the common oatmeal porridge of the coun- 
try, (the burgoo of the royal navy ;) but put all of the 
children, except the two youngest, on short allowance ; 
and by way of reconciling them in some measure to this 
stinted meal, she found out a little hoard of flour, part 



THE EASED ALE ROMANCE. 283 

of which she baked for them upon the hearth into little 
cakes ; and this unusual delicacy persuaded them to 
think that thej had been celebrating a feast. Next, 
before night coming on should make it too trying for 
her own feelings, or before fresh snow coming on should 
make it impossible, she issued out of doors. There her 
first task was, with the assistance of two younger broth- 
ers, to carry in from the peatstack as many peats as 
might serve them for a week's consumption. That 
done, in the second place, she examined the potatoes 
buried in ''brackens," (that is, withered fern :) these 
were not many ; and she thought it better to leave them 
where they were, excepting as many as would make a 
single meal, under a fear that the heat of their cottage 
would spoil them, if removed. 

Having thus made all the provision in her power for 
supporting their own lives, she turned her attention to 
the cow. Her she milked ; but, unfortunately, the 
milk she gave, either from being badly fed, or from 
some other cause, was too trifling to be of much con- 
sideration towards the wants of a large family. Here, 
however, her chief anxiety was to get down the hay for 
the cow's food from a loft above the outhouse ; and in 
this she succeeded but imperfectly, from want of 
strength and size to cope with the difficulties of the 
case ; besides that the increasing darkness by this time, 
together with the gloom of the place, made it a matter 
of great self-conquest for her to work at all ; and, as 
respected one night at any rate, she placed the cow in 
a situation of luxurious warmth and comfort. Then re- 
treating into the warm house, and " barring " the door, 
she sat down to undress the two youngest of the chil- 



284 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

dren ; them she laid carefully and cosily in their little 
nests up stairs, and sang them to sleep. The rest she 
kept up to bear her company until the clock should tell 
them it was midnight ; up to which time she still had a 
lingering hope that some welcome shout from the hills 
above, which they were all to strain their ears to catch, 
might yet assure them that they were not wholly or- 
phans, even though one parent should have perished. 
No shout, it may be supposed, was ever heard ; nor could 
a shout, in any case, have been heard, for the night was 
one of tumultuous wind. And though, amidst its rav- 
ings, sometimes they fancied a sound of voices, still, in 
the dead lulls that now and then succeeded, they heard 
nothing to confirm their hopes. As last services to 
what she might now have called her own little family, 
Agnes took precautions against the drifting of the 
snow within the door and the imperfect window, which 
had caused some discomfort on the preceding day ; and, 
finally, she adopted the most systematic and elaborate 
plans for preventing the possibility of their fire being 
extinguished, which, in the event of their being thrown 
upon the ultimate resource of their potatoes, would be 
absolutely (and in any event nearly) indispensable to 
their existence. 

The night slipped away, and another morning came, 
bringing with it no better hopes of any kind. Change 
there had been none but for the worse. The snow had 
greatly increased in quantity ; and the drifts seemed far 
more formidable. A second day passed like the first ; 
little Agnes still keeping her little flock quiet, and tol- 
erably comfortable ; and still calling on all the elders in 
succession, to say their prayers, morning and night. 



THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 285 

A third day came ; and whether it was on that or 
on the fourth, I do not now recollect ; but on one or 
other there came a welcome gleam of hope. The ar- 
rangement of the snow drifts had shifted during the 
night, and though the wooden bridge was still impracti- 
cable, a low wall had been exposed, over which, by a 
very considerable circuit, and crossing the low shoulder 
of a hill, it seemed possible that a road might be found 
into Grasmere. In some walls it was necessary to force 
gaps ; but this was effected without much difficulty, 
even by children ; for the Westmoreland walls are 
always " open," that is, uncemented with mortar ; and 
the push of a stick will readily detach so much from 
the upper part of an old crazy field wall, as to lower it 
sufficiently for female or for childish steps to pass. The 
little boys accompanied their sister until she came to 
the other side of. the hill, which, lying more sheltered 
from the weather, and to windward, offered a path on- 
wards comparatively easy. Here they parted ; and 
little Agnes pursued her solitary mission to the nearest 
house she could find accessible in Grasmere. 

No house could have proved a wrong one in such a 
case. Miss Wordsworth and I often heard the descrip- 
tion renewed, of the horror which, in an instant, dis- 
placed the smile of hospitable greeting, when little 
weeping Agnes told her sad tale. No tongue can ex- 
press the fervid sympathy which travelled through the 
vale, like the fire in an American forest, when it was 
learned that neither George nor Sarah Green had been 
seen by their children since the day of the Langdale 
sale. Within half an hour, or little more, from the re- 
motest parts of the valley — some of them distant nearly 



286 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

two miles from the point of rendezvous — all the men 
of Grasmere had assembled at the little cluster of cot- 
tages called " Kirktown," from their adjacency to the 
venerable parish church of St. Oswald. There were at 
the time I settled in Grasmere, (viz. in the spring of 
1809, and, therefore, I suppose at this time, fifteen 
months previously,) about sixty-three households in the 
vale ; and the total number of souls was about two 
hundred and sixty-five ; so that the number of fighting 
men would be about sixty or sixty-six, according to the 
common way of computing the proportion ; and the 
majority were so athletic and powerfully built, that, at 
the village games of wrestling and leaping. Professor 
Wilson, and some visitors of his and mine, scarcely 
one of whom was under five feet eleven in height, with 
proportionable breadth, seem but middle sized men 
amongst the towering forms of the Dalesmen. Sixty 
at least, after a short consultation as to the plan of op- 
erations, and for arranging the kind of signals by which 
they were to communicate from great distances, and in 
the perilous events of mists, or snow storms, set off, 
with the speed of Alpine hunters, to the hills. The 
dangers of the undertaking were considerable, under 
the uneasy and agitated state of the weather ; and all 
the women of the vale were in the greatest anxiety, 
until night brought them back, in a body, unsuccessful. 
Three days at the least, and I rather think five, the 
search was ineffectual ; which arose partly from the 
great extent of the ground to be examined, and partly 
from the natural mistake made of ranging almost exclu- 
sively, on the earlier days, on that part of the hills over 
which the path of Easedale might be presumed to have 



THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 287 

been selected under any reasonable latitude of circuit- 
ousness. But the fact is, when the fatal accident (for 
such it has often proved) of a permanent mist surprises 
a man on the hills, if he turns and loses his direction, 
he is a lost man ; and without doing this so as to lose 
the power of s'orienter in one instant, it is well known 
how difficult it is to avoid losing it insensibly and by 
degrees. Baffling snow showers are the worst kind of 
mists. And the poor Greens had, under that kind of 
confusion, wandered many a mile out of their proper 
track. 

The zeal of the people, meantime, was not in the least 
abated, but rather quickened, by the wearisome disap- 
pointments ; every hour of daylight was turned to ac- 
count ; no man of the valley ever came home to dinner ; 
and the reply of a young shoemaker, on the fourth 
night's return, speaks sufficiently for the unabated spir- 
it of the vale. Miss Wordsworth asked what he would 
do on the next morning. " Go up again, of course," 
was his answer. But what if to-morrow also should 
turn out like all the rest ? " Why go up in stronger 
force on the next day." Yet this man was sacrificing 
his own daily earnings without a chance of recompense. 
At length sagacious dogs were taken up ; and, about 
noonday, a shout from an aerial height, amongst thick 
volumes of cloudy vapor, propagated through repeating 
bands of men from a distance of many miles, conveyed 
as by telegraph the news that the bodies were found. 
George Green was found lying at the bottom of a pre- 
cipice, from which he had fallen. Sarah Green was 
found on the summit of the precipice ; and, by laying 
together all the indications of what had passed, the sad 



288 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

hieroglyphics of their last agonies, it was conjectured 
that the husband had desired his wife to pause for a 
few minutes, wrapping her, meantime, in his own great 
coat, whilst he should go forward and reconnoitre the 
ground, in order to catch a sight of some object (rocky 
peak, or tarn, or peat-field) which might ascertain 
their real situation. Either the snow above, already 
lying in drifts, or the blinding snow storms driving into 
his eyes, must have misled him as to the nature of the 
circumjacent ground ; for the precipice over which he 
had fallen was but a few yards from the spot in which 
he had quitted his wife. The depth of the descent, 
and the fury of the wind, (almost always violent on 
these cloudy altitudes,) would prevent any distinct com- 
munication between the dying husband below and his 
despairing wife above ; but it was believed by the shep- 
herds, best acquainted with the ground and the range 
of sound as regarded the capacities of the human ear, 
under the probable circumstances of the storm, that 
Sarah might have caught, at intervals, the groans of 
her unhappy partner, supposing that his death were at 
all a lingering one. Others, on the contrary, supposed 
her to have gathered this catastrophe rather from the 
want of any sounds, and from his continued absence, 
than from any one distinct or positive expression of it ; 
both because the smooth and unruffled surface of the 
snow where he lay seemed to argue that he had died 
without a struggle, perhaps without a groan, and be- 
cause that tremendous sound of " hurtling" in the up- 
per chambers of the air, which often accompanies a 
snow storm, when combined with heavy gales of wind, 
would utterly oppress and stifle (as they conceived) 



THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 289 

any sounds so feeble as those from a dying man. In 
any case, and by whatever sad language of sounds or 
signs, positive or negative, she might have learned or 
guessed her loss, it was generally agreed that the wild 
shrieks heard towards midnight in Langdale* Head 
announced the agonizing moment which brought to her 
now widowed heart the conviction of utter desolation 
and of final abandonment to her own fast-fleeting ener- 
gies. It seemed probable that the sudden disappear- 
ance of her husband from her pursuing eyes would teach 
her to understand his fate ; and that the consequent 
indefinite apprehension of instant death lying all around 
the point on which she sat, had kept her stationary to 
the very attitude in which her husband left her, until 
her failing powers and the increasing bitterness of the 
cold, to one no longer in motion, would soon make 
those changes of place impossible, which, at any rate, 
had appeared too dangerous. The footsteps in some 
places, wherever drifting had not obliterated them, yet 
traceable as to the outline, though partially filled Up 
with later falls of snow, satisfactorily showed that how- 

* I once heard, also, in talking with a Langdale family upon this 
tragic tale, that the sounds had penetrated into the valley of Little 
Langdale ; -which is possible enough. For although this interesting 
recess of the entire Langdale basin (which bears somewhat of the same 
relation to Great Langdale that Easedale bears to Grasmere) does, in 
fact, lie beyond Langdale Head by the entire breadth of that dale, yet 
from the singular accident of having its area raised far above the level 
of the adjacent vales, one most solitary section of Little Langdale (in 
which lies a tiny lake, and on the banks of that lake dwells one solitary 
family) being exactly at right angles both to Langdale Head and to the 
other complementary section of the Lesser Langdale, is brought into a 
position and an elevation virtually much nearer to objects (especially to 
audible objects) on the Langdale Fells. 

13 



290 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

ever much they might have rambled, after crossing and 
doubling upon their own paths, and many a mile astray 
from their right track, still they must have kept to- 
gether to the very plateau or shelf of rock at which their 
wanderings had terminated ; for there were evidently 
no steps from this plateau in the retrograde order. 

By the time they had reached this final stage of their 
erroneous course, all possibility of escape must have 
been long over for both alike ; because their exhaustion 
must have been excessive before they could have reach- 
ed a point so remote and high ; and, unfortunately, the 
direct result of all this exhaustion had been to throw 
them farther off their home, or from " any dwelling- 
place of man," than they were at starting. Here, there- 
fore, at this rocky pinnacle, hope was extinct for either 
party. But it was the impression of the vale, that, per- 
haps within half an hour before reaching this fatal point, 
George Green might, had his conscience or his heart 
allowed him in so base a desertion, have saved himself 
siftgly, without any very great difficulty. It is to be 
hoped, however — and, for my part, I think too well of 
human nature to hesitate in believing — that not many, 
even amongst the meaner-minded and the least generous 
of men, could have reconciled themselves to the abandon- 
ment of a poor, fainting female companion in such circum- 
stances. Still, though not more than a most imperative 
duty, it was one (I repeat) which most of his associates 
believed to have cost him (perhaps consciously) his life. 
For his wife not only must have disabled him greatly 
by clinging to his arm for support ; but it was known, 
from her peculiar character and manner, that she would 
be likely to rob him of his coolness and presence of 



THE EASEDALB ROMANCE 291 

mind by too painfully fixing his thoughts, where her 
own would be busiest, upon their helpless little family. 
'' Stung- with the thoughts of home " — to borrow the 
fine expression of Thompson in describing a similar 
case — alternately thinking of the blessedness of tliat 
warm fireside at Blentarn Ghyll, which was not again 
to spread its genial glow through her freezing limbs, 
and of those darling little faces which, in this world, 
she was to see no more; unintentionally, and with- 
out being aware even of that result, she would rob the 
brave man (for such he was) of his fortitude, and 
the strong man of his animal resources. And yet — 
(such, in the very opposite direction, was equally the 
impression universally through Grasmere) — had Sarah 
Green foreseen, could her afi'ectionate heart have guess- 
ed even the tenth part of that love and neighborly 
respect for herself, which soon afterwards expressed 
themselves in showers of bounty to her children ; could 
she have looked behind the curtain of destiny sufficient- 
ly to learn that the very desolation of these poor chil- 
dren which wrung her maternal heart, and doubtless 
constituted to her the sting of death, would prove the 
signal and the pledge of such anxious guardianship as 
not many rich men's children receive, and that this 
overflowing offering to her own memory would not be 
a hasty or decaying tribute of the first sorrowing sensi- 
bilities, but would pursue her children steadily until 
their hopeful settlement in life — or anything approach- 
ing this, to have known or have guessed, would have 
caused (as all said who knew her) to welcome the bit- 
ter end by which such privileges were to be purchased. 
The funeral of the ill-fated Greens was, it may be 



292 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

supposed, attended by all the vale ; it took place about 
eight days after they were found ; and the day happen- 
ed to be in the most perfect contrast to the sort of 
weather which prevailed at the time of their misfortune ; 
some snow still remained here and there upon the 
ground : but the azure of the sky was unstained by a 
cloud ; and a golden sunlight seemed to sleep, so balmy 
and tranquil was the season, upon the very hills where 
they had wandered — then a howling wilderness, but 
now a green pastoral lawn, in its lower ranges, and a 
glittering expanse, smooth, apparently, and not difficult 
to the footing, of virgin snow, in its higher. George 
Green had, I believe, an elder family by a former wife ; 
and it was for some of these children, who lived at a 
distance, and who wished to give their attendance at 
the grave, that the funeral was delayed. After this sol- 
emn ceremony was over — at which, by the way, I then 
heard Miss Wordsworth say that the grief of Sarah's 
illegitimate daughter was the most overwhelming she had 
ever witnessed — a regular distribution of the children 
was made amongst the wealthier families of the vale. 
There had already, and before the funeral, been a per- 
fect struggle to obtain one of the children, amongst all 
who had any facilities for discharging the duties of 
such a trust ; and even the poorest had put in their 
claim to bear some part in the expenses of the case. 
But it was judiciously decided, that none of the chil- 
dren should be entrusted to any persons who seemed 
likely, either from old age, or from slender means, or 
from nearer and more personal responsibilities, to be 
under the necessity of devolving the trust, sooner or 
later, upon strangers, who might have none of that in- 



THE EASEDALE ROMANCE. 293 

terest in the children which attached, in their minds, 
the Grasraere people to the circumstances that made 
them orphans. Two twins, who had naturally played 
together and slept together from their birth, passed into 
the same family : the others were dispersed ; but into 
such kindhearted and intelligent families, with continu- 
ed opportunities of meeting each other on errands, or 
at church, or at sales, that it was hard to say which had 
the happier fate. And thus in so brief a period as one 
fortnight, a household that, by health and strength, by 
the humility of poverty, and by innocence of life, seem- 
ed sheltered from all attacks but those of time, came 
to be utterly broken up. George and Sarah Green 
slept in Grasmere churchyard, never more to know the 
want of " sun or guiding star." Their children were 
scattered over wealthier houses than those of their poor 
parents, through the vales of Grasmere or Rydal ; and 
Blentarn Ghyll, after being shut up for a season, and 
ceasing for months to send up its little slender column of 
smoke at morning and evening, finally passed into the 
hands of a stranger. 



ESSAYS. 



JOAN OP ARC. 

What is to be thought of her? What is to be 
thought of the poor shepherd girl from the hills and 
forests of Lorraine, that — like the Hebrew shepherd 
boy from the hills and forests of Judaea — rose sudden- 
ly out of the quiet, out of the safety, out of the reli- 
gious inspiration, rooted in deep pastoral solitudes, to 
a station in the van of armies, and to the more perilous 
station at the right hand of kings ? The Hebrew boy 
inaugurated his patriotic mission by an act^ by a victo- 
rious act^ such as no man could deny. But so did the 
girl of Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read by 
those who saw her nearest. Adverse armies bore wit- 
ness to the boy as no pretender ; but so they did to the 
gentle girl. Judged by the voices of all who saw them 
from a station of good-will^ both were found true and 
loyal to any promises involved in their first acts. En- 
emies it was that made the difference between their 
subsequent fortunes. The boy rose to a splendor and 
a noonday prosperity, both personal and public, that 
rang through the records of his people, and became a 
by-word amongst his posterity for a thousand years, 
until the sceptre was departing from Judah. The poor, 
forsaken girl, on the contrary, drank not herself from 
that cup of rest which she had secured for France. She 
never sang together with the songs that rose in her 
native Domremy, as echoes to the departing steps of the 
invaders. She mingled not in the festal dances at Yau- 
13* (297) 



298 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

couleurs which celebrated in rapture the redemption of 
France. No ! for her voice was then silent : no ! for 
her feet were dust. Pure, innocent, noble-hearted girl ! 
whom, from earliest youth, ever I believed in, as full of 
truth and self-sacrifice, this was amongst the strongest 
pledges for thy truth, that never once — no, not for a 
moment of weakness — didst thou revel in the vision of 
coronets and honor from man. Coronets for thee ! 
no ! Honors, if they come when all is over, are for 
those that share thy blood. Daughter of Domremy, 
when the gratitude of thy king shall awaken, thou wilt 
be sleeping the sleep of the dead. Call her, King of 
France, but she will not hear thee ! Cite her by thy ap- 
paritors to come and receive a robe of honor, but she 
will be found en contumace. When the thunders of 
universal France, as even yet may happen, shall pro- 
claim the grandeur of the poor shepherd girl that gave 
up all for her country, thy ear, young shepherd girl, 
will have been deaf for five centuries. To suffer and to 
do, that was thy portion in this life ; that was thy des- 
tiny ; and not for a moment was it hidden from thyself. 
Life, thou saidst, is short : and the sleep which is in the 
grave is long ! Let me use that life, so transitory, for 
the glory of those heavenly dreams destined to comfort 
the sleep which is so long. This pure creature — pure 
from every suspicion of even a visionary self-interest, 
even as she was pure in senses more obvious — never 
once did this holy child, as regarded herself, relax from 
her belief in the darkness that was travelling to meet 
her. She might not prefigure the very manner of her 
death ; she saw not in vision, perhaps, the aerial alti- 
tude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators without end on 



JOAN OF ARC. 299 

every road pouring into Rouen as to a coronation, the 
surging smoke, the volleying flames, the hostile faces all 
around, the pitying eye that lurked but here and there, 
until nature and imperishable truth broke loose from 
artificial restraints ; — these might not be apparent 
through the mists of the hurrying future. But the 
voice that called her to death, that she heard for ever. 

Great was the throne of France even in those days, 
and great was he that sat upon it : but well Joanna 
knew that not the throne, nor he that sat upon it, was 
for her; but, on the contrary, that she was for them; 
not she by them, but they by her, should rise from the 
dust. Gorgeous were the lilies of France, and for cen- 
turies had the privilege to spread their beauty over 
land and sea, until, in another century, the wrath of 
God and man combined to wither them ; but well Joan- 
na knew, early at Domremy she had read that bitter 
truth, that the lilies of France would decorate no gar- 
land for her. Flower nor bud, bell nor blossom, would 
ever bloom for her. 

Joanna, as we in England should call her, but, ac- 
cording to her own statement, Jeanne (or, as M. Mi- 
chelet asserts, Jean) D'Arc, was born at Domremy, a 
village on the marches of Lorraine and Champagne, 
and dependent upon the town of Yaucouleurs. 

Domremy stood upon the frontiers, and, like other 
frontiers produced a mixed race representing the cis 
and the trans. A river (it is true) formed the boun- 
dary-line at this point — the river Meuse ; and that^ in 
old days, might have divided the populations ; but in 
these days it did not : there were bridges, there were 



300 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

ferries, and weddings crossed from the right bank to 
the left. Here lay two great roads, not so much for 
travellers that were few, as for armies that were too 
many by half. These two roads, one of which was the 
great high road between France and Germany, de- 
cussated at this very point ; which is a learned way oi 
saying, that they formed a St. Andrew's cross, or let- 
ter X. I hope the compositor will choose a good large 
X. in which case the point of intersection, the locus of 
conflux and intersection for these four diverging arms, 
will finish the reader's geographical education, by 
showing him to a hair's-breadth where it was that 
Domremy stood. Those roads, so grandly situated, as 
great trunk arteries between two mighty realms, and 
haunted for ever by wars, or rumors of wars, decuss- 
ated (for anything I know to the contrary) absolutely 
under Joanna's bedroom window ; one rolling away to 
the right, past Monsieur D'Arc's old barn, and the 
other unaccountably preferring to sweep round that 
odious man's pigsty to the left. 

On whichever side of the border chance had thrown 
Joanna, the same love to France would have been nur- 
tured. For it is a strange fact, noticed by M. Michelet 
and others, that the Dukes of Bar and Lorraine had 
for generations pursued the policy of eternal warfare 
with France on their own account, yet also of eternal 
amity and league with France, in case anybody else 
presumed to attack her. Let peace settle upon France, 
and before long you might rely upon seeing the little 
vixen Lorraine flying at the throat of France. Let 
France be assailed by a formidable enemy, and instant- 
ly you saw a Duke of Lorraine insisting on having his 



JOAN OF ARC. 301 

own throat cut in support of France ; which favor ac- 
cordingly was cheerfully granted to him in three great 
successive battles — twice by the English, viz., at Cre- 
cy and Agincourt, once by the Sultan at Nicopolis. 

This sympathy with France during great eclipses, in 
those that during ordinary seasons were always teasing 
her with brawls and guerilla inroads, strengthened the 
natural piety to France of those that were confessedly 
the children of her own house. The outposts of France, 
as one may call the great frontier provinces, were of 
all localities the most devoted to the Fleurs de Lys. 
To witness, at any great crisis, the generous devotion 
to these lilies of the little fiery cousin that in gentler 
weather was for ever tilting at the breast of France, 
could not but fan the zeal of France's legitimate daugh- 
ters : whilst to occupy a post of honor on the frontiers 
against an old hereditary enemy of France, would natu- 
rally stimulate this zeal by a sentiment of martial pride, 
by a sense of danger always threatening, and of hatred 
always smouldering. That great four-headed road was 
a perpetual memento to patriotic ardor. To say, this way 
lies the road to Paris, and that other way to Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle — this to Prague, that to Vienna — nourished the 
warfare of the heart by daily ministrations of sense. The 
eye that watched for the gleams of lance or helmet from 
the hostile frontier, the ear that listened for the groaning 
of wheels, made the high road itself, with its relations 
to centres so remote, into a manual of patriotic duty. 

The situation, therefore, locally, of Joanna was full 
of profound suggestions to a heart that listened for the 
stealthy steps of change and fear that too surely were 
in motion. But, if the place were grand, the time, the 



302 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

burden of the time, was far more so. The air over- 
head in its upper chambers was hurtling with the ob- 
scure sound ; was dark with sullen fermenting of storms 
that had been gathering for a hundred and thirty years. 
The battle of Agincourt in Joanna's childhood had re- 
opened the wounds of France. Crecy and Poictiers, 
those withering overthrows for the chivalry of France, 
had, before Agincourt occurred, been tranquillized by 
more than half a century ; but this resurrection of their 
trumpet wails made the whole series of battles and end- 
less skirmishes take their stations as parts in one drama. 
The graves that had closed sixty years ago, seemed to 
fly open in sympathy with a sorrow that echoed their 
own. The monarchy of France labored in extremity, 
rocked and reeled like a ship fighting with the dark- 
ness of monsoons. The madness of the poor king 
(Charles VI.) falling in at such a crisis, like the case 
of women laboring in childbirth during the storming 
of a city, trebled the awfulness of the time. Even the 
wild story of the incident which had immediately occa- 
sioned the explosion of this madness — the case of a 
man unknown, gloomy, and perhaps maniacal himself, 
coming out of a forest at noonday, laying his hand upon 
the bridle of the king's horse, checking him for a moment 
to say, " Oh, king, thou art betrayed," and then vanish- 
ing, no man knew whither, as he had appeared for no 
man knew what — fell in with the universal prostration 
of mind that laid France on her knees, as before the 
slow unweaving of some ancient prophetic doom. The 
famines, the extraordinary diseases, the insurrections 
of the peasantry up and down Europe — these were 
chords struck from the same mysterious harp ; but these 



JOAN OP ARC. 303 

were transitory chords. There have been others of 
deeper and more ominous sound. The termination of 
the Crusades, the destruction of the Templars, the Pa- 
pal interdicts, the tragedies caused or suffered by the 
house of Anjou, and by the emperor — these were full 
of a more permanent significance. But, since then, 
the colossal figure of feudalism was seen standing, as 
it were, on tiptoe, at Crecy, for flight from earth : that 
was a revolution unparalleled ; yet that was a trifle, by 
comparison with the more fearful revolutions that were 
mining below the church. By her own internal schisms, 
by the abominable spectacle of a double pope — so that 
no man, except through political bias, could even guess 
which was Heaven's vicegerent, and which the creature 
of hell — -the church was rehearsing, as in still earlier 
forms she had already rehearsed, those vast rents in 
her foundation which no man should ever heal. 

These were the loftiest peaks of the cloudland in the 
skies, that to the scientific gazer first caught the colors 
of the new morning in advance. But the whole vast 
range alike of sweeping glooms overhead, dwelt upon 
all meditative minds, even upon those that could not 
distinguish the tendencies nor decipher the forms. It 
was, therefore, not her own age alone, as affected by 
its immediate calamities, that lay with such weight upon 
Joanna's mind ; but her own age, as one section in a vast 
mysterious drama, unweaving through a century back, 
and drawing nearer continually to some dreadful crisis. 
Cataracts and rapids were heard roaring ahead ; and 
signs were seen far back, by help of old men's memories, 
which answered secretly to signs now coming forward 
on the eye, even as locks answer to keys. It was not 



304 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

wonderful that in such a haunted solitude, with such 
a haunted heart, Joanna should see angelic visions, and 
hear angelic voices. These voices whispered to her for 
ever the duty, self-imposed, of delivering France. Five 
years she listened to these monitory voices with inter- 
nal struggles. At length she could resist no longer. 
Doubt gave way ; and she left her home forever in 
order to present herself at the dauphin's court. 

The education of this poor girl was mean according 
to the present standard : was ineffably grand, according 
to a purer philosophic standard : and only not good for 
our age, because for us it would be unattainable. She 
read nothing, for she could not read ; but she had heard 
others read parts of the Roman martyrology. She wept 
in sympathy with the sad Misereres of the Romish 
church ; she rose to heaven with the glad triumphant Te 
Deums of Rome : she drew her comfort and her vital 
strength from the rites of the same church. But, next 
after these spiritual advantages, she owed most to the 
advantages of her situation. The fountain of Domremy 
was on the brink of a boundless forest ; and it was 
haunted to that degree by fairies, that the parish priest 
{cure} was obliged to read mass there once a-year, in 
order to keep them in any decent bounds. Fairies are 
important, even in a statistical view : certain weeds 
mark poverty in the soil, fairies mark its solitude. As 
surely as the wolf retires before cities, does the fairy 
sequester herself from the haunts of the licensed vic- 
tualler. A village is too much for her nervous delicacy : 
at most, she can tolerate a distant view of a hamlet. 
We may judge, therefore by the uneasiness and extra 
trouble which they gave to the parson, in what strength 



JOAN OP ARC. 305 

the faines mustered at Domremy ; and, by a satisfacto- 
ry consequence, how thinly sown with men and women 
must have been that region even in its inhabited spots. 
But the forests of Domremy — those were the glories of 
the land : for in them abode mysterious power and an- 
cient secrets that towered into tragic strength. " Ab- 
beys there were, and abbey windows," — " like Moorish 
temples of the Hindoos," that exercised even princely 
power both in Lorraine and in the German Diets. These 
had their sweet bells that pierced the forests for many 
a league at matins or vespers, and each its own dreamy 
legend. Few enough, and scattered enough, were these 
abbeys, so as in no degree to disturb the deep solitude 
of the region ; yet many enough to spread a network or 
awning of Christian sanctity over what else might have 
seemed a heathen wilderness. This sort of religious 
talisman being secured, a man the most afraid of ghosts 
(like myself, suppose, or the reader) becomes armed 
into courage to wander for days in their sylvan recesses. 
The mountains of the Yosges, on the eastern frontier of 
France, have never attracted much notice from Europe, 
except in 1813-14 for a few brief months, when they 
fell within Napoleon's line of defence against the Al- 
lies. But they are interesting for this, amongst other 
features, that they do not, like some loftier ranges, repel 
woods : the forests and the hills are on sociable terms. 
Live and let live, is their motto. For this reason, in 
part, these tracts in Lorraine were a favorite hunting- 
ground with the Carlovingian princes. About six hun- 
dred years before Joanna's childhood, Charlemagne 
was known to have hunted there. That, of itself, was 
^ grand incident in the traditions of a forest or a chase. 



306 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

In these vast forests, also, were to be found (if any- 
where to be found) those mysterious fawns that tempted 
solitary hunters into visionary and perilous pursuits 
Here was seen (if anywhere seen) that ancient stag who 
was already nine hundred years old, but possibly a hun- 
dred or two more, when met by Charlemagne ; and the 
thing was put beyond doubt by the inscription upon his 
golden collar. I believe Charlemagne knighted the stag ; 
and, if ever he is met again by a king, he ought to be 
made an earl — or, being upon the marches of France, 
a marquis. Observe, I don't absolutely vouch for all 
these things : my own opinion varies. On a fine breezy 
forenoon I am audaciously sceptical ; but, as twilight sets 
in, my credulity grows steadily, till it becomes equal to 
anything that could be desired. And I have heard can- 
did sportsmen declare that, outside of these very forests, 
they laughed loudly at all the dim tales connected with 
their haunted solitudes ; but, on reaching a spot notori- 
ously eighteen miles deep within them, they agreed with 
Sir Roger de Coverley, that a good deal might be said 
on both sides. 

Such traditions, or any others that (like the stag) 
connect distant generations with each other, are, for 
that cause, sublime ; and the sense of the shadowy, con- 
nected with such appearances that reveal themselves or 
not according to circumstances, leaves a coloring of sanc- 
tity over ancient forests, even in those minds that utterly 
reject the legend as a fact. 

But, apart from all distant stories of that order, in 
any solitary frontier between two great empires, as here, 
for instance, or in the desert between Syria and the Eu- 
phrates, there is an inevitable tendency in minds of any 



JOAN OF ABC. 307 

deep sensibility, to people the solitudes with phantom 
images of powers that were of old so vast. Joanna, 
therefore, in her quiet occupation of a shepherdess, 
would be led continually to brood over the political 
condition of her country, by the tradition of the past no 
less than by the mementoes of the local present. 

M. Michelet, indeed, says that La Pucelle was not a 
shepherdess. I beg his pardon : she icas. What he 
rests upon, I guess pretty well : it is the evidence of a 
woman called Haumette, the most confidential friend 
of Joanna. Now, she is a good witness, and a good 
girl, and I like her ; for she makes a natural and affec- 
tionate report of Joanna's ordinary life. But still, 
however good she may be as a witness, Joanna is bet- 
ter ; and she, when speaking to the dauphin, calls her- 
self in the Latin report Bergereta. Even Haumette 
confesses, that Joanna tended sheep in her girlhood. 
Haumette clearly thinks it more dignified for Joanna 
to have been darning the stockings of her horny-hoofed 
father. Monsieur D'Arc, than keeping sheep, lest she 
might then be suspected of having ever done something 
worse. But, luckily, there was no danger of that: 
Joanna never was in service ; and my opinion is, that 
her father should have mended his own stockings, since 
probably he was the party to make holes in them, as 
many a better man than D'Arc does ; meaning by that 
not myself, because, though probably a better man than 
D'Arc, I protest against doing anything of the kind. 
If I lived even with Friday in Juan Fernandez, either 
Friday must do all the darning, or else it must go un- 
done. The better men that I meant were the sailors 
in the British navy, every man of whom mends his own 



308 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCET. 

stockings. Who else is to do it? Do you suppose, 
reader, that the junior lords of the admiralty are un- 
der articles to darn for the navy ? 

The reason, meantime, for my systematic hatred of 
D'Arc is this. There was a story current in France 
before the Revolution, framed to ridicule the pauper 
aristocracy, who happened to have long pedigrees and 
short rent rolls, viz., that a head of such a house, dat- 
ing from the Crusades, was overheard saying to his son, 
a Chevalier of St. Louis, " Chevalier^ as-tu donne au 
cochon d manger ! " Now, it is clearly made out by 
the surviving evidence, that D'Arc would much have 
preferred continuing to say, " Ma fille^ as-tu donne au 
cochon a manger ? " to saying, " Pucelle d' Orleans^ 
as-tu sauve les fleurs-de-lys ? " There is an old Eng- 
lish copy of verses which argues thus : — 

" If the man that turnips cries, 
Cry not when his father dies — 
Then 'tis plain the man had rather — 
Have a turnip than his father.*' 

1 cannot say that the logic in these verses was ever en- 
tirely to my satisfaction. I do not see my way through 
it as clearly as could be wished. But I see my way 
most clearly through D'Arc ; and the result is — that 
he would greatly have preferred not merely a turnip to 
his father, but saving a pound or so of bacon to saving 
the Oriflamme of Frace. 

It is probable (as M. Michelet suggests) that the ti- 
tle of Virgin, or Pucelle^ had in itself, and apart from 
the miraculous stories about her, a secret power over 
the rude soldiery and partisan chiefs of that period ; 
for, in such a person, they saw a representative mani- 



JOAN OP ARC. 309 

festation of the Yirgin Mary, who, in a course of cen- 
turies, had grown steadily upon the popular heart. 

As to Joanna's supernatural detection of the dauphin 
(Charles Vll.) amongst three hundred lords and 
knights, I am surprised at the credulity which could 
ever lend itself to that theatrical juggle. Who admires 
more than myself the sublime enthusiasm, the rapturous 
faith in herself, of this pure creature ? But I am far 
from admiring stage artifices, which not La Pucelle^ 
but the court, must have arranged ; nor can surrender 
myself to the conjurer's legerdemain, such as may be 
seen every day for a shilling. Southey's " Joan of 
Arc " was published in 1796. Twenty years after, 
talking with Southey, I was surprised to find him still 
owning a secret bias in favor of Joan, founded on her 
detection of the dauphin. The story, for the benefit of 
the reader new to the case, was this : — La Pucelle 
was first made known to the dauphin, and presented to 
his court, at Chinon : and here came her first trial. By 
way of testing her supernatural pretensions, she was to 
find out the royal personage amongst the whole ark of 
clean and unclean creatures. Failing in this covp 
d'essai, she would not simply disappoint many a beating 
heart in the glittering crowd that on different motives 
yearned for her success, but she would ruin herself — 
and, as the oracle within had told her, would, by ruin- 
ing herself, ruin France. Our own sovereign lady Vic- 
toria rehearses annually a trial not so severe in degree, 
but the same in kind. She " pricks " for sheriffs. Jo- 
anna pricked for a king. But observe the difference : 
our own lady pricks for two men out of three ; Joanna 
for one man out of three hundred. Happy lady of the 



310 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

islands and the orient ! — she can go astray in her 
choice only by one half; to the extent of one half she 
must have the satisfaction of beiHg right. And yet, 
even with these tight limits to the misery of a bound- 
less discretion, permit me, liege Lady, with all loyalty, 
to submit — that now and then you prick with your pin 
the wrong man. But the poor child from Domremy, 
shrinking under the gaze of a dazzling court — not be- 
cause dazzling (for in visions she had seen those that 
were more so), but- because some of them wore a scoff- 
ing smile on their features — how should she throw her 
line into so deep a river to angle for a king, where 
many a gay creature was sporting that masqueraded as 
kings in dress ? Nay, even more than any true king 
would have done : for, in Southey's version of the story, 
the dauphin says, by way of trying the virgin's mag- 
netic sympathy with royalty, 

** On the throne, 
I the while mingling with the menial throng, 
Some courtier shall be seated." 

This usurper is even crowned : " the jewelled crown 
shines on a menial's head." But, really, that is " un 
peu fort ;" and the mob of spectators might raise a 
scruple whether our friend the jackdaw upon the throne, 
and the dauphin himself, were not grazing the shins of 
treason. For the dauphin could not lend more than 
belonged to him. According to the popular notion, he 
had no crown for himself; consequently none to lend, on 
any pretence whatever, until the consecrated Maid 
should take him to Eheims. This was the popular 
notion in France. But, certainly, it was the dauphin's 
interest to support the popular notion, as he meant to 



JOAN OP ARC. 311 

use the services of Joanna. For, if lie were king al- 
ready, what was it that she could do for him beyoud 
Orleans ? That is to say, what more than a mere mili- 
tary service could she render him ? And, above all, if 
he were king without a coronation, and without the oil 
from the sacred ampulla, what advantage was yet open 
to him by celerity above his competitor the English boy ? 
Now was to be a race for a coronation : he that should 
win that race, carried the superstition of France along 
with him : he that should first be drawn from the ovens 
of Rheims, was under that superstition baked into a 
king. 

La Pucelle, before she could be allowed to practise 
as a warrior, was put through her manual and platoon 
exercise, as a pupil in divinity, at the bar of six emi- 
nent men in wigs. According to Southey (v. 393, 
Book III., in the original edition of his " Joan of 
Arc " she " appalled the doctors." It's not easy to do 
that : but they had some reason to feel bothered, as 
that surgeon would assuredly feel bothered, who, upon 
proceeding to dissect a subject, should find the subject 
retaliating as a dissector upon himself, especially if 
Joanna ever made the speech to them which occupies 
V. 354-391, B. III. It is a double impossibility: 1st, 
because a piracy from Tindal's '' Christianity as old as 
the Creation " — a piracy d parte ante, and by three 
centuries ; 2dly, it is quite contrary to the evidence on 
Joanna's trial. Southey's " Joan, " of a. d. 1796 (Cot- 
tle, Bristol), tells the doctors, amongst other secrets, 
that she never in her life attended — 1st, Mass ; nor 
2d, the Sacramental table ; nor 3d, Confession. In the 
meantime, all this deistical confession of Joanna's, be- 



312 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

sides being suicidal for the interest of her cause, is op- 
posed to the depositions upon both trials. The very 
best witness called from first to last, deposes that Joan- 
na attended these rites of her church even too often ; 
was taxed with doing so ; and, by blushing, owned the 
charge as a fact, though certainly not as a fault. Jo- 
anna was a girl of natural piety, that saw God in forests, 
and hills, and fountains ; but did not the less seek him 
in chapels and consecrated oratories. 

This peasant girl was self-educated through her own 
natural meditativeness. If the reader turns to that 
divine passage in " Paradise Regained, " which Milton 
has put into the mouth of our Savior when first enter- 
ing the wilderness, and musing upon the tendency of 
those great impulses growing within himself — 

*' Oh, what a multitude of thoughts at once 
Awaken'd in me swarm, while I consider 
What from within I feel myself, and hear 
What from without comes often to my ears, 
111 sorting with my present state compared ! 
When I was yet a child, no childish play 
To me was pleasing; all my mind was set 
Serious to learn and know, and thence to do 
What might be public good ; myself I thought 
Born to that end" — 

he will have some notion of the vast reveries which 
brooded over the heart of Joanna in early girlhood, 
when the wings were budding that should carry her 
from Orleans to Rheims ; when the golden chariot was 
dimly revealing itself, that should carry her from the 
kingdom of France Delivered to the eternal kingdom. 
It is not requisite, for the honor of Joanna, nor is 
there, in this place, room to pursue her brief career of 



JOAN OF ARC. 313 

action. That, thoiigli wonderful, forms the earthly part 
of her story : the spiritual part is the saintly passion of 
her imprisonment, trial, and execution. It is unfortu- 
nate, therefore, for Southey's " Joan of Arc " (which, 
however, should always be regarded as a juvenile 
effort), that, precisely when her real glory begins, the 
poem ends. But this limitation of the interest grew, 
no doubt, from the constraint inseparably attached to 
the law of epic unity. Joanna's history bisects into 
two opposite hemispheres, and both could not have been 
presented to the eye in one poem, unless by sacrificing 
all unity of theme, or else by involving the earlier half, 
as a narrative episode, in the latter ; which, however, 
might have been done, for it might have been communicat- 
ed to a fellow-prisoner, or a confessor, by Joanna herself. 
It is sufficient, as concerns this section of Joanna's life, to 
say that she fulfilled, to the height of her promises, the 
restoration of the prostrate throne. France had become a 
province of England ; and for the ruin of both, if such a 
yoke could be maintained. Dreadful pecuniary exhaus- 
tion caused the English energy to droop ; and that critical 
opening La Pucelle used with a corresponding felicity 
of audacity and suddenness (that were in themselves 
portentous) for introducing the wedge of French native 
resources, for rekindling the national pride, and for 
planting the dauphin once more upon his feet. When 
Joanna appeared, he had been on the point of giving 
up the struggle with the English, distressed as they 
were, and of flying to the south of France. She taught 
him to blush for such abject counsels. She liberated 
Orleans, that great city, so decisive by its fate for the 
issue of the war, and then beleagured by the English 
14 



314 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCE Y. 

with an elaborate application of engineering skill un- 
precedented in Europe. Entering the city after sunset, 
on the 29th of April, she sang mass on Sunday, May 8, 
for the entire disappearance of the besieging force. On 
the 29th of June, she fought and gained over the 
English the decisive battle of Patay ; on the 9th of 
Tuly, she took Troyes by a coup-de-main from a mixed 
garrison of English and Burgundians ; on the 15th of 
that month, she carried the dauphin into Rheims ; on 
Sunday the 17th, she crowned him ; and there she rested 
from her labor of triumph. All that was to be done^ she 
had now accomplished : what remained was — to suffer. 
All this forward movement was her own : excepting 
one man, the whole council was against her. Her ene- 
mies were all that drew power from earth. Her sup- 
porters were her own strong enthusiasm, and the head- 
long contagion by which she carried this sublime frenzy 
into the hearts of women, of soldiers, and of all who 
lived by labor. Henceforwards she was thwarted ; and 
the worst error that she committed was, to lend the 
sanction of her presence to counsels which she had 
ceased to approve. But she had now accomplished the 
capital objects which her own visions had dictated. 
These involved all the rest. Errors were now less im- 
portant ; and doubtless it had now become more difficult 
for herself to pronounce authentically what were errors. 
The noble girl had achieved, as by a rapture of motion, 
the capital end of clearing out a free space around her 
sovereign, giving him the power to move his arms with 
effect ; and, secondly, the inappreciable end of winning 
for that sovereign what seemed to all France the heav- 
enly ratification of his rights, by crowning him with the 



JOAN OF ARC. 315 

ancient solemnities. She had made it impossible for 
the English now to step before her. They were caught 
in an irretrievable blunder, owing partly to discord 
amongst the uncles of Henry VI., partly to a want of 
funds, but partly to the very impossibility which they be- 
lieved to press with tenfold force upon any French at- 
tempt to forestall theirs. They laughed at such a thought ; 
and whilst they laughed, she did it. Henceforth the 
single redress for the English of this capital oversight, 
but which never could have redressed it effectually, was, 
to vitiate and taint the coronation of Charles VH. as 
the work of a witch. That policy, and not malice (as 
M. Michelet is so happy to believe), was the moving 
principle in the subsequent prosecution of Joanna. Un- 
less they unhinged the force of the first coronation in 
the popular mind, by associating it with power given 
from hell, they felt that the sceptre of the invader was 
broken. 

But she, the child that, at nineteen, had wrought 
wonders so great for France, was she not elated ? Did 
she not lose, as men so often have lost, all sobriety of 
mind when standing upon the pinnacle of success so 
giddy? Let her enemies declare. Daring the progress 
of her movement, and in the centre of ferocious 
struggles, she had manifested the temper of her feelings, 
by the pity which she had everywhere expressed for the 
suffering enemy. She forwarded to the Englib^h leaders 
a touching invitation to unite with the French, as 
brothers, in a common crusade against infidels, thus 
opening the road for a soldierly retreat. She interpos- 
ed to protect the captive or the wounded — she mourned 
over the excesses of her countrymen — she threw her- 



316 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

self off her horse to kneel by the dying English soldier, 
and to comfort him with such ministrations, physical or 
spiritual, as his situation allowed. '' Nolebat," says the 
evidence, " uti ense suo, aut quemquam interficere." 
She sheltered the English, that invoked her aid, in her 
own quarters. She wept as she beheld, stretched 
on the field of battle, so many brave enemies that 
had died without confession. And, as regarded her- 
self, her elation expressed itself thus : — On the day 
when she had finished her work, she wept ; for she 
knew that, when her triumphal task was done, her end 
must be approaching. Her aspirations pointed only to 
a place, which seemed to her more than usually full of 
natural piety, as one in which it would give her pleas- 
ure to die. And she uttered, between smiles and tears, 
as a wish that inexpressibly fascinated her heart, and 
yet was half-fantastic, a broken prayer, that God would 
return her to the solitudes from which he had drawn 
her, and suffer her to become a shepherdess once more. 
It was a natural prayer, because nature has laid a neces- 
sity upon every human heart to seek for rest, and to 
shrink from torment. Yet, again, it was a half-fantastic 
prayer, because, from childhood upwards, visions that 
she had no power to mistrust, and the voices which 
sounded in her ear for ever, had long since persuaded 
her mind, that for her no such prayer could be granted. 
Too well she felt that her mission must be worked out 
to the end, and that the end was now at hand. All 
went wrong from this time. She herself had created 
the funds out of which the French restoration should 
grow ; but she was not suffered to witness their develop- 
ment, or their prosperous application. More than one 



JOAN OF ARC. 317 

military plan was entered upon which she did not ap- 
prove. But she still continued to expose her person as 
before. Severe wounds had not taught her caution. 
And at length, in a sortie from Compeigne (whether 
through treacherous collusion on the part of her own 
friends is doubtful to this day), she was made prisoner by 
the Burgundians, and finally surrendered to the English. 
Now came her trial. This trial, moving of course under 
English influence, was conducted in chief by the Bishop 
of Beauvais. He was a Frenchman, sold to English 
interests, and hoping, by favor of the English lead- 
ers, to reach the highest preferment. Bishop that 
art, Archbishop that shall be, Cardinal that mat/st be, 
were the words that sounded continually in his ear ; 
and doubtless, a whisper of visions still higher, of a 
triple crown, and feet upon the necks of kings, some- 
times stole into his heart. M. Michelet is anxious to 
keep us in mind that this bishop was but an agent of 
the English. True. But it does not better the case 
for his countryman — that, being an accomplice in the 
crime, making himself the leader in the persecution 
against the helpless girl, he was willing to be all this in 
the spirit, and with the conscious vileness of a cat's- 
paw. Never from the foundations of the earth was there 
such a trial as this, if it were laid open in all its beauty 
of defence, and all its hellishness of attack. Oh, child 
of France ! shepherdess, peasant girl ! trodden under 
foot by all around thee, how I honor thy flashing intel 
lect, quick as God's lightning, and true as God's light- 
ning to its mark, that ran before France and laggard 
Europe by many a century, confounding the malice of 
the ensnarer, and making dumb the oracles of false- 



318 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

hood ! Is it not scandalous, is it not humiliating to 
civilization, that, even at this day, France exhibits the 
horrid spectacle of judges examining the prisoner 
against himself; seducing him, by fraud, into treacher- 
ous conclusions against his own head ; using the terrors 
of their power for extorting confessions from the frailty 
of hope ; nay (which is worse), using the blandishments 
of condescension and snaky kindness for thawing into 
compliances of gratitude those whom they had failed to 
freeze into terror? Wicked judges! Barbarian juris- 
prudence ! that, sitting in your own conceit on the sum- 
mits of social wisdom, have yet failed to learn the first 
principles of criminal justice ; sit ye humbly and with 
docility at the feet of this girl from Domremy, that tore 
your webs of cruelty into shreds and dust. " Would 
you examine me as a witness against myself? " was the 
question by which many times she defied their arts. 
Continually she showed that their interrogations were 
irrelevant to any business before the court, or that en- 
tered into the ridiculous charges against her. General 
questions were proposed to her on points of casuistical 
divinity ; two-edged questions, which not one of them- 
selves could have answered without, on the one side, 
landing himself in heresy (as then interpreted), or, on 
the other, in some presumptuous expression of self-es- 
teem. Next came a wretched Dominican, that pressed 
her with an objection, which, if applied to the Bible 
would tax every one of its miracles with unsoundness. 
The monk had the excuse of never having read the 
Bible. Her answer to this, if there were room to place 
the whole in a clear light, was as shattering as it was 
rapid. Another thought to entrap her by asking what 



JOAN OF ARC. 319 

language the angelic visitors of her solitude had talked ; 
as though heavenly counsels could want polyglot inter- 
preters for every word, or that God needed language at 
all in whispering thoughts to a human heart. Then 
came a worse devil, who asked her whether the arch- 
angel Michael had appeared naked. Not comprehend- 
ing the vile insinuation, Joanna, whose poverty suggest- 
ed to her simplicity that it might be the costliness of 
suitable robes which caused the demur, asked them if 
they fancied God, who clothed the flowers of the 
valleys, unable to find raiment for his servants. The 
answer of Joanna moves a smile of tenderness, but the 
disappointment of her judges makes one laugh exultingly . 
Others succeeded by troops, who upbraided her with 
leaving her father ; as if that greater Father, whom she 
believed herself to have been serving, did not retain the 
power of dispensing with his own rules, or had not said, 
that for a less cause than martyrdom, man and woman 
should leave both father and mother. 

On Easter Sunday, when the trial had been long pro- 
ceeding, the poor girl fell so ill as to cause a belief that 
she had been poisoned. It was not poison. Nobody 
had any interest in hastening a death so certain. M. 
Michelet, whose sympathies with all feelings are so 
quick, that one would gladly see them always as justly 
directed, reads the case most truly. Joanna had a two- 
fold malady. She was visited by a paroxysm of the 
complaint called home-sickness ; the cruel nature of her 
imprisonment, and its length, could not but point her 
solitary thoughts, in darkness and in chains (for chained 
she was), to Domremy. And the season, which was 
the most heavenly period of the spring, added stings to 



320 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

this yearning. That was one of her maladies — nostal- 
gia, as medicine calls it ; the other was weariness and 
exhaustion from daily combats with malice. She saw 
that everybody hated her, and thirsted for her blood ; 
nay, many kind-hearted creatures that would have pitied 
her profoundly, as regarded all political charges, had 
their natural feelings warped by the belief that she had 
dealings with fiendish powers. She knew she was to 
die ; that was 7iot the misery : the misery was, that this 
consummation could not be reached without so much 
intermediate strife, as if she were contending for some 
chance (where chance was none) of happiness, or were 
dreaming for a moment of escaping the inevitable. 
Why, then, did she contend ? Knowing that she would 
reap nothing from answering her persecutors, why did 
she not retire by silence from the superfluous contest ? 
It was because her quick and eager loyalty to truth 
would not suffer her to see it darkened by frauds, which 
she could expose, but others, even of candid listeners, 
perhaps could not ; it was through that imperishable 
grandeur of soul, which taught her to submit meekly 
and without a struggle to her punishment, but taught 
her not to submit — no, not for a moment — to calumny 
as to facts, or to misconstruction as to motives. Besides, 
there were secretaries all around the court taking down 
her words. That was meant for no good to her. But 
the end does not always correspond to the meaning. 
And Joanna might say to herself — these words that 
will be used against me to-morrow and the next day, 
perhaps in some nobler generation may rite again for 
my justification. Yes, Joanna, they are rising even 
now in Paris, and for more than justification. 



JOAN OF ARC. 321 

AVoman, sister — there are some things which you 
do not execute as well as your brother, man ; no, nor 
ever will. Pardon me, if I doubt whether you will 
ever produce a great poet from your choirs, or a Mo- 
zart, or a Phidias, or a Michael Angelo, or a great 
philosopher, or a great scholar. By which last is meant 
— not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, 
but also on an infinite and electrical power of combi- 
nation ; bringing together from the four winds, like the 
angel of the resurrection, what else were dust from 
dead men's bones, into the unity of breathing life. If 
you can create yourselves into any of these great crea- 
tors, why have you not ? 

Yet, sister woman, though I cannot consent to find 
a Mozart or a Michael Angelo in your sex, cheerfully, 
and with the love that burns in depths of admiration, 
I acknowledge that you can do one thing as well as the 
best of us men — a greater thing than even Milton is 
known to have done, or Michael Angelo — you can die 
grandly, and as goddesses would die, were goddesses 
mortal. If any distant worlds (which may be the case) 
are so far ahead of us Tellurians in optical rescources, 
as to see distinctly through their telescopes all that we 
do on earth, what is the grandest sight to which we 
ever treat them ? St. Peter's at Rome, do you fancy, 
on Easter Sunday, or Luxor, or perhaps the Himalayas ? 
Oh, no ! my friend : suggest something better ; these 
are baubles to them; they see in other worlds, in their 
own, far better toys of the same kind. These, take my 
word for it, are nothing. Do you give it up ? The 
finest thing, then, we have to show them, is a scaffold 
on the morning of execution. I assure you there is 
14* 



822 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCE Y. 

a strong muster in those far telescopic worlds, on any 
such morning, of those who happen to find themselves 
occupying the right hemisphere for a peep at ns. How, 
then, if it be announced in some such telescopic world 
by those who make a livelihood of catching glimpses at 
our newspapers, whose language they have long since 
deciphered, that the poor victim in the morning's sacri- 
fice is a woman ? How, if it be published in that dis- 
tant world, that the sufferer wears upon her head, in 
the eyes of many, the garlands of martyrdom ? How, 
if it should be some Marie Antoinette, the widowed 
queen, coming forward on the scaffold, and presenting 
to the morning air her head turned gray by sorrow, 
daughter of Caesars kneeling down humbly to kiss the 
guillotine, as one that worships death ? How, if it were 
the noble Charlotte Corday, that in the bloom of youth, 
that with the loveliest of persons, that with homage 
waiting upon her smiles wherever she turned her face 
to scatter them — homage that followed those smiles as 
surely as the carols of birds, after showers in springy 
follow the reappearing sun and the racing of sunbeams 
over the hills — yet thought all these things cheaper 
than the dust upon her sandals, in comparison of deliver- 
ance from hell for her dear suffering France ! Ah ! 
these were spectacles indeed for those sympathizing 
people in distant worlds ; and some, perhaps would suf- 
fer a sort of martyrdom themselves, because they could 
not testify their wrath, could not bear witness to the 
strength of love and to the fury of hatred that burned 
within them at such scenes ; could not gather into 
golden urns some of that glorious dust which rested in 
the catacombs of earth. 



JOAN OP ARC. 328 

On the Wednesday after Trinity Sunday in 1431, be- 
ing then about nineteen years of age, the maid of Arc 
underwent her martyrdom. She was conducted before 
mid-day, guarded by eight hundred spearmen, to a plat- 
form of prodigious height, constructed of wooden bil- 
lets supported by occasional walls of lath and plaster, 
and traversed by hollow spaces in every direction for 
the creation of air-currents. The pile " struck terror," 
says M. Michelet, " by its height ; " and, as usual, the 
English purpose in this is viewed as one of pure malig- 
nity. But there are two ways of explaining all that. 
It is probable that the purpose was merciful. 

The circumstancial incidents of the execution, unless 
with more space than I can now command, I should be 
unwilling to relate. I should fear to injure, by imper- 
fect report, a martyrdom which to myself appears so 
unspeakably grand. Yet for a purpose, pointing not at 
Joanna, but at M. Michelet — viz., to convince him that 
an Englishman is capable of thinking more highly of La 
Pucelle than even her admiring countrymen, I shall, in 
parting, allude to one or two traits in Joanna's de- 
meanor on the' scaffold, and to one or two in that of the 
bystanders, which authorize me in questioning an opin- 
ion of his upon this martyr's firmness. The reader 
ought to be reminded that Joanna D'Arc was subjected 
to an unusually unfair trial of opinion. Any of the 
elder Christian martyrs had not much to fear of per 
sonal rancor. The martyr was chiefly regarded as the 
enemy of Caesar ; at times, also, where any knowledge 
of the Christian faith and morals existed, with the 
enmity that arises spontaneously in the worldly against 
the spiritual. But the martyr, though disloyal, was not 



324 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

supposed to be, therefore, anti-national ; and still less 
was individually hateful. What was hated (if any- 
thing) belonged to his class, not to himself separately. 
Now, Joanna, if hated at all, was hated personally, 
and in Rouen on national grounds. Hence there would 
be a certainty of calumny arising against her^ such as 
would not affect martyrs in general. That being the 
case, it would follow of necessity that some people would 
impute to her a willingness to recant. No innocence 
could escape that. Now, had she really testified this 
willingness on the scaffold, it would have argued noth- 
ing at all but the weakness of a genial nature shrinking 
from the instant approach of torment. And those will 
often pity that weakness most, who, in their own per- 
sons, would yield to it least. Meantime, there never 
was a calumny uttered tliat drew less support from the 
recorded circumstances. It rests w}^o\\ wo positive testi- 
mony, and it has a weight of contradicting testimony to 
stem. And yet, strange to say, M. Michelet, who at 
times seems to admire the Maid of Arc as much as I do, 
is the one sole writer amongst her friends who lends 
some countenance to this odious slander. His words 
are, that, if she did not utter this word recant with her 
lips, she uttered it in her heart. " Whether she said 
the word is uncertain ; but I affirm that she thought it."*" 

Now, I affirm that she did not ; not in any sense of 
the word *' thought " applicable to the case. Here is 
France calumniating La Pucelle : here is England de- 
fending her. M. Michelet can only mean that, on d priori 
principles, every woman must be liable to such a weak- 
ness : that Joanna was a woman ; e7'go, that she was 
liable to such a weakness. That is, he only supposes 



JOAN OP ARC. 325 

her to have uttered the word by an argument which 
presumes it impossible for anybody to have done other- 
wise. I, on the contrary, throw the ojius of the argu- 
ment not on presumable tendencies of nature, but on the 
known facts of that morning's execution, as recorded by 
multitudes. What else, I demand, than mere weight of 
metal, absolute nobility of deportment, broke the vast 
line of battle then arrayed against her ? What else 
but her meek, saintly demeanor won from the enemies, 
that till now had believed her a witch, tears of raptur- 
ous admiration ? " Ten thousand men," says M. Miche- 
let himself, " ten thousand men wept ; " and of these 
ten thousand the majority were political enemies knitted 
together by cords of superstition. What else was it 
but her constancy, united with her angelic gentleness, 
that drove the fanatic English soldier — who had sworn 
to throw a faggot on her scaffold, as his tribute of ab- 
horrence, that did so, that fulfilled his vow — suddenly 
to turn away a penitent for life, saying everywhere that 
he had seen a dove rising upon wings to heaven from 
the ashes where she had stood ? What else drove the 
executioner to kneel at every shrine for pardon to his 
share in the tragedy ! And if all this were insuffi- 
cient, then I cite the closing act of her life, as valid on 
her behalf, were all other testimonies against her. The 
executioner had been directed to apply his torch from 
below. He did so. The fiery smoke rose upwards in 
billowing volumes. A Dominican monk was then stand- 
ing almost at her side. Wrapped up in his sublime 
office, he saw not the danger, but still persisted in his 
prayers. Even then, when the last enemy was racing up 
the fiery stairs to seize her, even at that moment did thia 



326 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCET. 

noblest of girls think only for him, the one friend that 
would not forsake her, and not for herself ; bidding 
him with her last breath ,to care for his own preserva- 
tion, but to leave her to God. That girl, whose latest 
breath ascended in this sublime expression of self- 
oblivion, did not utter the word recant either with her 
lips or in her heart. No; she did not, though one 
should rise from the dead to swear it. 

Bishop of Beauvais ! thy victim died in fire upon a 
scaffold — thou upon a down bed. But for the depart- 
ing minutes of life, both are oftentimes alike. At the 
farewell crisis, when the gates of death are opening, 
and flesh is resting from its struggles, oftentimes the 
tortured and torturer have the same truce from carnal 
torment ; both sink together into sleep ; together both, 
sometimes, kindle into dreams. When the mortal mists 
were gathering fast upon you two, bishop and shepherd 
girl — when the pavilions of life were closing up their 
shadowy curtains about you — let us try, through the 
gigantic glooms, to decipher the flying features of your 
separate visions. 

The shepherd girl that had delivered France — she, 
from her dungeon, she, from her baiting at the stake, 
she, fi'om her duel with fire, as she entered her last 
dream — saw Domremy, saw the fountain of Domremy, 
saw the pomp of forests in which her childhood had 
wandered. That Easter festival, which man had de- 
nied to her languishing heart — that resurrection of 
spring-time, which the darkness of dungeons had inter- 
cepted from her, hungering after the glorious liberty 
of forests — were by God given back into her hands, 



JOAN OP ARC. 327 

as jewels that had been stolen from her l)y robbers. 
With those, perhaps (for the minutes of dreams can 
stretch into ages), was given back to her by God the 
bliss of childhood. Dy special privilege, for her might 
be created, in this farewell dream, a second childhood, 
innocent as the first ; but not, like that, sad with the 
gloom of a fearful mission in the rear. The mission 
had now been fulfilled. The storm was weathered, the 
skirts even of that mighty storm were drawing ofi*. The 
blood that she was to reckon for had been exacted ; 
the tears that she was to shed in secret had been paid 
to the last. The hatred to herself in all eyes had been 
faced steadily, had been sufi'ered, had been survived. 
And in her last fight upon the scaffold she had triumph- 
ed gloriously ; victoriously she had tasted the stings of 
death. For all, except this comfort from her farewell 
dream, she had died — died, amidst the tears of ten 
thousand enemies — died, amidst the drums and trump- 
ets of armies — died, amidst peals redoubling upon 
peals, volleys upon volleys, from the saluting clarions of 
martyrs. 

Bishop of Beauvais ! because the guilt-burdened man 
is in dreams haunted and waylaid by the most frightful 
of his crimes, and because upon that fluctuating mir- 
ror — rising (like the mocking mirrors of mirage in 
Arabian deserts) from the fens of death — most of all 
are reflected the sweet countenances which the man haa 
laid in ruins ; therefore I know, bishop, that you also, 
entering your final dream, saw Domremy. That foun 
tain, of which the witnesses spoke so much, showed it> 
self to your eyes in pure morning dews : but neithei 
dews, nor the holy dawn, could cleanse away the bright 



328 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

spots of innocent blood upon its surface. By the foun- 
tain, bishop, you saw a woman seated, that hid her face. 
But as you draw near, the woman raises her wasted 
features. Would Domremy know them again for the 
features of her child ? Ah, but you know them, bish- 
op, well ! Oh, mercy ! what a groan was thai which 
the servants, waiting outside the bishop's dream at his 
bedside, heard from his laboring heart, as at this mo- 
ment he turned away from the fountain and the woman, 
seeking rest in the forests afar off. Yet not so to es- 
cape the woman, whom once again he must behold be- 
fore he dies. In the forests to which he prays for pity, 
will he find a respite ? What a tumult, what a gath- 
ering of feet is there ! In glades, where only wild 
deer should run, armies and nations are assembling ; 
towering in the fluctuating crowd are phantoms that 
belong to departed hours. There is the great English 
Prince, Regent of France. There is my Lord of Win- 
chester, the princely cardinal, that died and made no 
sign. There is the Bishop of Beauvais, clinging to the 
shelter of thickets. What building is that which hands 
so rapid are raising ? Is it a martyr's scaffold ? Will 
they burn the child of Domremy a second time ? No : 
it is a tribunal that rises to the clouds ; and two na- 
tions stand around it, waiting for a trial. Shall my 
Lord of Beauvais sit again upon the judgment-seat, and 
again number the hours for the innocent ? Ah ! no : 
he is the prisoner at the bar. Already all is waiting : 
the mighty audience is gathered, the Court is hurrying 
to their seats, the witnesses are arrayed, the trumpets 
are sounding, the judge is taking his place. Oh ! but 
this is sudden. My lord, have you no counsel ? '' Coun- 



JOAN OP ARC. 329 

sel I have none : in heaven above, or on earth l)eneath, 
counsellor there is none now that would take a brief 
from me : all are silent." Is it, indeed, come to this ? 
Alas the time is short, the tumult is wondrous, the 
crowd stretches away into infinity, but yet I will search 
j1 it for somebody to take your brief: I know of some- 
body that will be your counsel. Who is tliis that com- 
eth from Domremy ? Who is she in bloody coronation 
robes from Rheims ? Who is she that cometh with 
blackened flesh from walking the furnaces of Rouen ? 
This is she, the shepherd girl, counsellor that had none 
for herself, whom I choose, bishop, for yours. She it 
is, I engage, that shall take my lord's brief. She it is, 
bishop, that would plead for you : yes, bishop, she — 
when heaven and earth are silent. 



THE PALIMPSEST. 

You know perhaps, masculine reader, better than 1 
can tell you, what is a Paliinpsest. Possibly, you have 
one in your own library. But yet, for the sake of 
others who may not know, or may have forgotten, suffer 
me to explain it here, lest any female reader, who 
honors these papers with her notice, should tax me with 
explaining it once too seldom ; which would be worse 
to bear than a simultaneous complaint from twelve proud 
men, that I had explained it three times too often. You 
therefore, fair reader, understand, that for your accom- 
modation exclusively, I explain the meaning of this 
word. It is Greek ; and our sex enjoys the office and 
privilege of standing counsel to yours, in all questions 
of Greek. We are, under favor, perpetual and heredi- 
tary dragomans to you. So that if, by accident you 
know the meaning of a Greek word, yet by courtesy to 
us, your counsel learned in that matter, you will always 
seem not to know it. 

A palimpsest, then, is a membrane or roll cleansed of 
its manuscript by reiterated successions. 

What was the reason that the Greeks and the Romans 
had not the advantage of printed books ? The answer 
will be, from ninety-nine persons in a hundred, — Be- 
cause the mystery of printing was not then discovered. 
But this is altogether a mistake. The secret of print- 
ing must have been discovered many thousands of times 
before it was used, or could be used. The inventive 
330 



THE PALIMPSEST. 331 

powers of man are divine ; and also his stupidity is di- 
vine, as Cowper so playfully illustrates in the slow de- 
velopment of the sofa through successive generations 
of immortal dulness. It took centuries of blockheads 
to raise a joint stool into a chair ; and it required some- 
thing like a miracle of genius, in the estimate of elder 
generations, to reveal the possibility of lengthening a 
chair into a chaise-longue^ or a sofa. Yes, these were 
inventions that cost mighty throes of intellectual power. 
But still, as respects printing, and admirable as is the 
stupidity of man, it was really not quite equal to the 
task of evading an object which stared him in the face 
with so broad a gaze. It did not require an Athenian 
intellect to read the main secret of printing in many 
scores of processes which the ordinary uses of life were 
daily repeating. To say nothing of analogous artifices 
amongst various mechanic artisans, all that is essential 
in printing must have been known to every nation that 
struck coins and medals. Not, therefore, any want of 
a printing art, — that is, of an art for multiplying im- 
pressions, — but the want of a cheap material for receiv- 
ing- such impressions, was the obstacle to an introduc- 
tion of printed books, even as early as Pisistratus. The 
ancients did apply printing to records of silver and 
gold ; to marble, and many other substances cheaper 
than gold and silver, they did not, since each monument 
required a separate effort of inscription. Simply this 
defect it was of a cheap material for receiving im- 
presses, which froze in its very fountains the early re- 
sources of printing. 

Some twenty years ago, this view of the case was 
luminously expounded by Dr. Whateley, the present 



832 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

Archbishop of Dublin, and with the merit, I believe, of 
having first suggested it. Since then, this theory has 
received indirect confirmation. Now, out of that origi- 
nal scarcity afi'ecting all materials proper for durable 
books, which continued up to times comparatively mod- 
ern, grew the opening for palimpsests. Naturally, when 
once a roll of parchment or of vellum had done its 
office, by propagating through a series' of generations 
what once had possessed an interest for them^ but which, 
under changes of opinion or of taste, had faded to their 
feelings or had become obsolete for their undertakings, 
the whole membrana or vellum skin, the two-fold pro- 
duct of human skill, costly material, and costly freight 
of thought, which it carried, drooped in value concur- 
rently — supposing that each were inalienably associated 
to the other. Once it had been the impress of a human 
mind which stamped its value upon the vellum ; the 
vellum, though costly, had contributed but a secondary 
element of value to the total result. At length, how- 
ever, this relation between the vehicle and its freight 
has gradually been undermined. The vellum, from 
having been the setting of the jewel, has risen at length 
to be the jewel itself; and the burden of thought, 
from having given the chief value to the vellum, has 
now become the chief obstacle to its value ; nay, has 
totally extinguished its value, unless it can be dissociat- 
ed from the connection. Yet, if this unlinking can be 
effected, then, fast as the inscription upon the membrane 
is sinking into rubbish, the membrane itself is reviving 
in its separate importance ; and, from bearing a minis- 
terial value, the vellum has come at last to absorb the 
whole value. 



THE PALIMPSEST. 338 

Hence the importance for our ancestors that the sep- 
aration should be effected. Hence it arose in the mid- 
dle ages, as a considerable object for chemistry, to dis- 
charge the writing from the roll, and thus to make it 
available for a new succession of thoughts. The soil, 
if cleansed from what once had been hot-house plants, 
but now were held to be weeds, would be ready to re- 
ceive a fresh and more appropriate crop. In that object 
the monkish chemist succeeded ; but after a fashion 
which seems almost incredible, — incredible not as re- 
gards the extent of their success, but as regards the 
delicacy of restraints under which it moved, — so equal- 
ly adjusted was their success to the immediate interests 
of that period, and to the reversionary objects of our 
own. They did the thing ; but was not so radically as 
to prevent us, their posterity, from w/zdoing it. They 
expelled the writing sufficiently to leave a field for the 
new manuscript, and yet not sufficiently to make the 
traces of the elder manuscript irrecoverable for us. 
Could magic, could Hermes Trismegistus, have done 
more ? What would you think, fair reader, of a prob- 
lem such as this, — to write a book which should be 
sense for your own generation, nonsense for the next, 
should revive into sense for the next after that, but 
again become nonsense for the fourth ; and so on by 
alternate successions, sinking into night or blazing into 
day, like the Sicilian river Arethusa, and the English 
river Mole ; or like the undulating motions of a flat- 
tened stone which children cause to skim the breast of 
a river, now diving . below the water, now grazing its 
surface, sinking heavily into darkness, rising buoyantly 
into light, through a long vista of alternations ? Such 



334 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

a problem, you say, is impossible. But really it is a 
problem not harder apparently than — to bid a genera- 
tion kill, but so that a subsequent generation may call 
back into life ; bury, but so that posterity may command 
to rise again. Yet that was what the rude chemistry of 
past ages effected when coming into combination with 
the reaction from the more refined chemistry of our 
own. Had they been better chemists, had we been worse, 
the mixed result, namely, that, dying for them^ the flower 
should revive for us^ could not have been effected. They 
did the thing proposed to them : they did it effectually, 
for they founded upon it all that was wanted : and yet 
ineffectually, since we unravelled their work ; effacing 
all above which they had superscribed ; restoring all 
below which they had effaced. 

Here, for instance, is a parchment which contained 
some Grecian tragedy, the Agamemnon of JEschylus, 
or the Phoenissae of Euripides. This had possessed a 
value almost inappreciable in the eyes of accomplished 
scholars, continually growing rarer through genera- 
tions. But four centuries are gone by since the de- 
struction of the Western Empire. Christianity, with 
towering grandeurs of another class, has founded a dif- 
ferent empire ; and some bigoted, yet perhaps holy 
monk, has washed away (as he persuades himself) the 
heathen's tragedy, replacing it with a monastic legend ; 
which legend is disfigured with fables in its incidents, 
and yet in a higher sense is true, because interwoven 
with Christian morals, and with the sublimest of Chris- 
tian revelations. Three, four, five centuries more, find 
man still devout as ever; but the language has become 
obsolete, and even for Christian devotion a new era 



THE PALIMPSEST. 



has arisen, throwing it into the channel of crusading 
zeal or of chivalrous enthusiasm. The membrana is 
wanted now for a knightly romance — for " my Cid," 
or Coeur de I-ion ; for Sir Tristrem, or Lybajus Dis- 
conus. In this way, by means of the imperfect chem- 
istry known to the mediseval period, the same roll has 
served as a conservatory for three separate generations 
of flowers and fruits, all perfectly different, and yet all 
specially adapted to the wants of the successive pos- 
sessors. The Greek tragedy, the monkish legend, the 
knightly romance, each has ruled its own period. One 
harvest after another has been gathered into the gar- 
ners of man through ages far apart. And the same hy- 
draulic machinery has distributed, through the same 
marble fountains, water, milk, or wine, according to the 
habits and training of the generations that came to 
quench their thirst. 

Such were the achievements of rude monastic chem- 
istry. But the more elaborate chemistry of our own 
days has reversed all these motions of our simple an- 
cestors, which results in every stage that to them would 
have realized the most fantastic amongst the promises 
of thaumaturgy. Insolent vaunt of Paracelsus, that he 
would restore the original rose or violet out of the ash- 
es settling from its combustion — that is now rivalled 
in this modern achievement. The traces of each suc- 
cessive handwriting, regularly effaced, as had been im- 
agined, have, in the inverse order, been regularly called 
back : the footsteps of the game pursued, wolf or stag, 
in each several chase, have been unlinked, and hunted 
back through all their doubles ; and, as the chorus of 
tho Athenian stage unwove through the antistrophe 



336 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

every step that had been mystically woven through th 
strophe, so by our modern conjurations of science, s» 
crets of ages remote from each other have been exo: 
cised* from the accumulated shadows of centuries. 
Chemistry, a witch as potent as the Erictho of Lucanto 
(^Pharsalia^ lib. vi. or vii.), has extorted by her tor- 
ments, from the dust and ashes of forgotten centuries,' 
the secrets of a life extinct for the general eye, but 
still glowing in the embers. Even the fable of the 
Phoenix, that secular bird, who propagated his solitary 
existence, and his solitary births, along the line of cen- 
turies, through eternal relays of funeral mists, is but a 
type of what we have done with Palimpsests. We 
have backed upon each phoenix in the long regressus, 
and forced him to expose his ancestral phoenix, sleep- 
ing in the ashes below his own ashes. Our good old 
forefathers would have been aghast at our sorceries ; 
and, if they speculated on the propriety of burning Dr. 
Faustus, us they would have burned by acclamation. 
Trial there would have been none ; and they could not 
otherwise have satisfied their horror of the brazen prof- 
ligacy marking our modern magic, than by ploughing 
up the houses of all who had been parties to it, and 
sowing the ground with salt. 

Fancy not, reader, tliat this tumult of images, illus- 
trative or allusive, moves under any impulse or pur- 
pose of mirth. It is but the coruscation of a restless 
understanding, often made ten times more so by irri- 

* Some readers may be apt to suppose, from all English experience, 
that the word exorcise means properly banishment to the shades. Not 
BO. Citation from the shades, or sometimes the torturing coercion of 
mystic adjurations, is more truly the primary sense. 



THE PALIMPSEST. 337 

tation of the nerves, such as you will first learn to com- 
prehend (its how and its y)hy) some stage or two 
ahead. The image, the memorial, the record, which 
for me is derived from a palimpsest, as to one great 
fact in our human being, and which immediately I will 
show you, is but too repellent of laughter; or, even if 
laughter had been possible, it would have been such 
laughter as oftentimes is thrown ofi" from the fields of 
ocean,* laughter that hides, or that seems to evade 
mustering tumult ; foam-bells that weave garlands of 
phosphoric radiance for one moment round the eddies 
of gleaming abysses ; mimicries of earthborn flowers 
that for the eye raise phantoms of gayety, as oftentimes 
for the ear they raise the echoes of fugitive laughter, 
mixing with the ravings and choir-voices of an angry 
sea. 

What else than a natural and mighty palimpsest is 
the human brain ? Such a palimpsest is my brain ; such 
a palimpsest, oh reader ! is yours. Everlasting layers 
of ideas, images, feelings, have fallen upon your brain 
softly as light. Each succession has seemed to bury 
all that went before. And yet, in reality, not one has 
been extinguished. And if, in the vellum palimpsest, 
lying amongst the other diplomata of human archives 

* •* Laughter from the fields of ocean. ^^ — Many readers will recall, 
though, at the moment of writing, my own thoughts did not recall, the 
well-known passage in the Prometheus — 

TTOVTtoiv IS xujLiarcjv 

u4.vQi3iiov yeXuai^a. 

"0 multitudinous laughter of the ocean billows!'* It is not clear 
whether -^schylus contemplated the laughter as addressing the ear or 
the eye. 

15 



338 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

or libraries, there is anything fantastic or which moves 
to lauohter, as oftentimes there is in the grotesque col- 
lisions of those successive themes, having no natural 
connection, which by pure accident have consecutively 
occupied the roll, yet, in our own heaven-created pa- 
limpsest, the deep memorial palimpsest of the brain, 
there are not and cannot be such incoherencies. The 
fleeting accidents of a man's life, and its external shows, 
may indeed be irrelate and incongruous ; but the or- 
ganizing principles w^hich fuse into harmony, and gath- 
er about fixed predetermined centres, whatever hetero- 
geneous elements life may have accumulated from with- 
out, will not permit the grandeur of human unity great- 
ly to be violated, or its ultimate repose to be troubled, 
in the retrospect from dying moments, or from other 
great convulsions. 

Such a convulsion is the struggle of gradual suffoca- 
tion, as in drowning; and, in the original Opium Con- 
fessions, I mentioned a case of that nature communi- 
cated to me by a lady from her own childish experi- 
ence. The lady is still living, though now of unusually 
great age ; and I may mention that amongst her faults 
never was numbered any levity of principle, or care- 
lessness of the most scrupulous veracity ; but, on the 
contrary, such faults as arise from austerity, too harsh, 
perhaps, and gloomy, indulgent neither to others nor 
herself. And, at the time of relating this incident, 
when already very old, she had become religious to 
asceticism. According to my present belief, she had 
completed her ninth year, when, playing by the side of 
a solitary brook, she fell into one of its deepest pools. 
Eventually, but after what lapse of time nobody ever 



THE PALIMPSEST. 339 

knew, she was saved from death by a farmer, who, rid- 
ing in some distant lane, had seen her rise to the sur- 
face ; but not until she had descended within the abyss 
of death, and looked into its secrets, as far, perhaps, 
as ever human eye can have looked that had permis- 
sion to return. At a certain stage of this descent, a 
blow seemed to strike her, phosphoric radiance sprang 
forth from her eyeballs ; and immediately a mighty 
theatre expanded within her brain. In a moment, in 
the twinkling of an eye, every act, every design of her 
past life, lived again, arraying themselves not as a suc- 
cession, but as parts of a coexistence. Such a light 
fell upon the whole path of her life backwards into the 
shades of infancy, as the light, perhaps, which wrapt 
the destined Apostle on his road to Damascus. Yet 
that light blinded for a season ; but hers poured celes- 
tial vision upon the brain, so that her consciousness 
became omnipresent at one moment to every feature in 
the infinite review. 

This anecdote was treated sceptically at the time 
by some critics. But, besides that it has since been 
confirmed by other experience essentially the same, re- 
ported by other parties in the same circumstances, who 
had never heard of each other, the true point for aston- 
ishment is not the simultaneity of arrangement under 
which the past events of life, though in fact successive, 
had formed their dread line of revelation. This was 
but a secondary phenomenon ; the deeper lay in the 
resurrection itself, and the possibility of resurrection, 
for what had so long slept in the dust. A pall, deep as 
oblivion, had been thrown by life over every trace of 
these experiences ; and yet suddenly, at a silent com- 



340 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

mand, at the signal of a blazing rocket sent up from the 
brain, the pall draws up, and the whole depths of the 
theatre are exposed. Here was the greater mystery : 
now this mystery is liable to no doubt ; for it is repeat- 
ed, and ten thousand times repeated, by opium, for 
those who are its martyrs. 

Yes, reader, countless are the mysterious hand-writ- 
ings of grief or joy which have inscribed themselves 
successively upon the palimpsest of your brain ; and, 
like the annual leaves of aboriginal forests, or the un- 
dissolving snows on the Himalaya, or light falling upon 
light, the endless strata have covered up each other in 
forgetfulness. But by the hour of death, but by fever, 
but by the searchings of opium, all these can revive in 
strength. They are not dead, but sleeping. In the 
illustration imagined by myself, from the case of some 
individual palimpsest, the Grecian tragedy had seemed 
TO be displaced, but was not displaced, by the monkish 
legend ; and the monkish legend had seemed to be dis- 
placed, but was not displaced, by the knightly romance. 
In some potent convulsion of the system, all wheels 
back into its earliest elementary stage. The bewilder- 
ing romance, light tarnished with darkness, the semi- 
fabulous legend, truth celestial mixed with human false- 
hoods, these fade even of themselves, as life advances. 
The romance has perished that the young man adored ; 
the legend has gone that deluded the boy ; but the deep, 
deep tragedies of infancy, as when the child's hands 
were unlinked forever from his mother's neck, or his lips 
forever from his sister's kisses, these remain lurking be- 
low all, and these lurk to the last. 



CONVERSATION. 

Our remarks must of necessity be cursory here, so 
that they will not need or permit much preparation ; 
but one distinction, which is likely to strike on some 
minds, as to the two different purposes of conversation, 
ought to be noticed, since otherwise it will seem doubt- 
ful whether we have not confounded them ; or, secondly, 
if we have not confounded them, which of the two it is 
that our remarks contemplate. In speaking above of 
conversation, we have fixed our view on those uses of 
conversation which are ministerial to intellectual cul- 
ture ; but, in relation to the majority of men, conversa- 
tion is far less valuable as an organ of intellectual cul- 
ture than of social enjoyment. For one man interested 
in conversation as a means of advancing his studies, there 
are fifty men whose interest in conversation points ex- 
clusively to convivial pleasure. This, as being a more 
extensive function of conversation, is so far the more 
dignified function ; whilst, on the other hand, such a 
purpose as direct mental improvement seems by its 
superior gravity to challenge the higher rank. Yet, in 
fact, even here the more general purpose of conversation 
takes precedency ; for, when dedicated to the objects 
of festal delight, conversation rises by its tendency to 
the rank of a fine art. It is true that not one man in a 
million rises to any distinction in this art ; nor, what- 
ever France may conceit of herself, has any one nation, 
(341) 



342 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

amongst other nations, a real precedency in this art. 
The artists are rare indeed ; but still the art, as distin- 
guished from the artist, may, by its difficulties, by the 
quality of its graces, and by the range of its possible 
brilliances, take as 2ifine art ; or, at all events, according 
to its powers of execution, it tends to that rank ; whereas 
the best order of conversation that is simply ministerial to 
a purpose of use, cannot pretend to a higher name than 
that of a mechanic art. But these distinctions, though 
they would form the grounds of a separate treatment in a 
regular treatise on conversation, maybe practically neg- 
lected on this occasion, because the hints offered, by 
the generality of the terms in which they express them- 
selves, may be applied indifferently to either class of 
conversation. The main diseases, indeed, which ob- 
struct the healthy movement of conversation, recur 
everywhere ; and alike whether the object be pleasure 
or profit in the free interchange of thought, almost 
universally that free interchange is obstructed in the 
very same way, by the very same defect of any control- 
ling principle for sustaining the general rights and in- 
terests of the company, and by the same vices of self- 
indulgent indolence, or of callous selfishness, or of inso- 
lent vanity, in the individual talkers. 

Let us fall back on the recollections of our own ex- 
perience. In the course of our life we have heard much 
of what was reputed to be the select conversation of the 
day, and we have heard many of those who figured at the 
moment as effective talkers ; yet in mere sincerity, and 
without a vestige of misanthropic retrospect, we must 
say, that never once has it happened to us to come away 
from any display of that nature without intense disap- 



CONVERSATION. 343 

pointinent ; and it always appeared to us that this fail- 
ure (which soon ceased to be a disappointment) was in- 
evitable by a necessity of the case. For here lay the 
stress of the difiiculty ; almost all depends, in most 
trials of skill, upon the parity of those who are matched 
agaiust each other. An ignorant person supposes that, 
to an able disputer, it must be an advantage to have a 
feeble opponent ; whereas, on the contrary, it is ruin to 
him ; for he cannot display his own powers but through 
something of a corresponding power in the resistance 
of his antagonist. A brilliant fencer is lost and con- 
founded in playing with a novice ; and the same thing 
takes place in playing at ball, or battledore, or in danc- 
ing, where a powerless partner does not enable you to 
shine the more, but reduces you to mere helplessness, 
and takes the wind altogether out of your sails. Now, 
if by some rare good luck the great talker — the pro- 
tagonist — of the evening has been provided with a 
commensurate second, it is just possible that something 
like a brilliant " passage of arms " may be the result, 
though much, even in that case, will depend on the 
chances of the moment for furnishing a fortunate theme ; 
and even then, amongst the superior part of the com- 
pany, a feeling of deep vulgarity and of mountebank 
display is inseparable from such an ostentatious duel of 
wit. On the other hand, supposing your great talker 
to be received like any other visitor, and turned loose 
upon the company, then he must do one of two things ; 
either he will talk upon outre subjects specially tabooed 
to his own private use, in which case the great man has 
the air of a quack-doctor addressing a mob from a street 
stage ; or else he will talk like ordinary people upoa 



344 BEAtJTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

popular topics; in which case the company, out of 
natural politeness, that they may not seem to be staring 
at him as a lion, will hasten to meet him in the same 
style ; the conversation will become general ; the great 
man will seem reasonable and well-bred ; but, at the 
same time, we grieve to say it, the great man will have 
been extinguished by being drawn oflf from his exclusive 
ground. The dilemma, in short, is this : if the great 
talker attempts the plan of showing off by firing can- 
non shot when everybody else is contented with mus- 
ketry, then undoubtedly he produces an impression, but 
at the expense of insulating himself from the sympa- 
thies of the company, and standing aloof as a sort of 
monster hired to play tricks of funambulism for the 
night. Yet again, if he contents himself with a mus- 
ket like other people, then for us, from whom he mod- 
estly hides his talent under a bushel, in what respect is 
he different from the man who has no such talent ? 

" If she be not fair to me, 
What care I how fair she be? " 

The reader, therefore, may take it upon the a priori 
logic of this dilemma, or upon the evidence of our own 
experience, that all reputation for brilliant talking is a 
visionary thing, and rests upon a sheer impossibility, 
namely, upon such a histrionic performance in a state 
of insulation from the rest of the company as could not 
be effected, even for a single time, without a rare and 
difficult collusion, and could not, even for that single 
time, be endurable to a man of delicate and honorable 
sensibilities. 

Yet surely Coleridge had such a reputation, and 
without needing any collusion at all ; for Coleridge, 



CONVERSATION. 345 

unless "he could have all the talk, would have none. 
But then this was not conversation ; it was not collo- 
quium, or talking ivith the company, but alloquium, or 
talking to the company. As Madame de Stael observ- 
ed, Coleridge talked, and could talk, only by mono- 
logue. Such a mode of systematic trespass upon the 
conversational rights of a whole party, gathered to- 
gether under pretence of amusement, is fatal to every 
purpose of social intercourse, whether that purpose be 
connected with direct use and the service of the intel- 
lect, or with the general graces and amenities of life. 
The result is the same, under whatever impulse such an. 
outrage is practised ; but the impulse is not always the 
same ; it varies ; and so far the criminal intention va- 
ries. In some people this gross excess takes its rise in 
pure arrogance. They are fully aware of their own 
intrusion upon the general privileges of the company ; 
they are aware of the temper in which it is likely to be 
received ; but they persist wilfully in the wrong, as a 
sort of homage levied compulsorily upon those who 
may wish to resist it, but hardly can do so without a 
violent interruption, wearing the same shape of inde- 
corum as that which they resent. In most people, how- 
ever, it is not arrogance which prompts this capital 
offence against social rights, but a blind selfishness, 
yielding passively to its own instincts, without being 
distinctly aware of the degree in which this self-indul- 
gence trespasses on the rights of others. We see the 
same temper illustrated at times in travelling ; a brutal 
person, as we are disposed at first to pronounce him, 
but more frequently one who yields unconsciously to 
a lethargy of selfishness, plants himself at the public 



346 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

fireplace, so as to exclude his fellow-travellers from all 
but a fraction of the warmth. ' Yet he does not do this 
in a spirit of wilful aggression upon others ; he has 
but a glimmering suspicion of the odious shape which 
his own act assumes to others, for the luxurious torpor 
of self-indulgence has extended its mists to the energy 
and clearness of his perceptions. Meantime, Coleridge's 
habit of soliloquizing through a whole evening of four 
or five hours had its origin neither in arrogance nor in 
absolute selfishness. The fact was that he could not 
talk unless he were uninterrupted, and unless he were 
able to count upon this concession from the company. 
It was a silent contract between him and his hearers, 
that nobody should speak but himself. If any man 
objected to this arrangement, why did he come ? For 
the custom of the place, the lex loci, being notorious, 
by coming at all he was understood to profess his alle- 
giance to the autocrat who presided. It was not, 
therefore, by an insolent usurpation that Coleridge per- 
sisted in monology through his whole life, but in virtue 
of a concession from the kindness and respect of his 
friends. You could not be angry with him for using 
his privilege, for it was a privilege conferred by others, 
and a privilege which he was ready to resign as soon 
as any man demurred to it. But though reconciled to 
it by these considerations, and by the ability with which 
he used it, you could not but feel that it worked ill for 
all parties. Himself it tempted oftentimes into pure 
garrulity of egotism, and the listeners it reduced to a 
state of debilitated sympathy or of absolute torpor. 
Prevented by the custom from putting questions, from 
proposing doubts, from asking for explanations, react- 



CONVERSATION. 347 

ing by no mode of mental activity, and condemned also 
to the mental distress of hearing opinions or doctrines 
stream past them by flights which they must not arrest 
for a moment, so as even to take a note of them, and 
which yet they could not often understand, or, seeming 
to understand, could not always approve, the audience 
sank at times into a listless condition of inanimate 
vacuity. To be acted upon forever, but never to react, 
is fatal to the very powers by which sympathy must 
grow, or by which intelligent admiration can be evoked. 
For his own sake, it was Coleridge's interest to have 
forced his hearers into the active commerce of question 
and answer, of objection and demur. Not otherwise 
was it possible that even the attention could be kept 
from drooping, or the coherency and dependency of 
the arguments be forced into light. 

The French rarely make a mistake of this nature. 
The graceful levity of the nation could not easily err 
in this direction, nor tolerate such deliration in the 
greatest of men. Not the gay temperament only of the 
French people, but the particular qualities of the French 
language, (which however poor for the higher purposes 
of passion) is rich beyond all others for purposes of 
social intercourse, prompt them to rapid and vivacious 
exchange of thought. Tediousness, therefore, above all 
other vices, finds no countenance or indulgence amongst 
the French, excepting always in two memorable cases, 
namely, first, the case of tragic dialogue on the stage, 
which is privileged to be tedious by usage and tradition ; 
and, secondly, the case (authorized by the best usages 
in living society) of narrators or raconteurs. This is a 
shocking anomaly in the code of French good taste as 



348 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

applied to conversation. Of all the bores whom man 
in his folly hesitates to hang, and heaven in its mysteri- 
ous wisdom suffers to propagate their species, the most 
insufferable is the teller of " good stories," — a nuisance 
that should be put down by cudgelling, by submersion 
in horse-ponds, or any mode of abatement, as summarily 
as men would combine to suffocate a vampyre or a mad 
dog. This case excepted, however, the French have the 
keenest possible sense of all that is odious and all that 
is ludicrous in prosing, and universally have a horror of 
des longuers. It is not strange, therefore, that Madame 
de Stael noticed little as extraordinary in Coleridge 
beyond this one capital monstrosity of unlimited solilo- 
quy, that being a peculiarity which she never could have 
witnessed in France ; and, considering the burnish of 
her French tastes in all that concerned colloquial charac- 
teristics, it is creditable to her forbearance that she no- 
ticed even this rather as a memorable fact than as the 
inhuman fault which it was. On the other hand, Cole- 
ridge was not so forbearing as regarded the brilliant 
French lady. He spoke of her to ourselves as a very 
frivolous person, and in short summary terms that dis- 
dained to linger upon a subject so inconsiderable. It is 
remarkable that Goethe and Schiller both conversed 
with Madame de Stael, like Coleridge, and both spoke 
of her afterwards in the same disparaging terms as Cole- 
ridge. But it is equally remarkable that Baron William 
Humboldt, who was personally acquainted with all the 
four parties, — Madame de Stael, Goethe, Schiller, and 
Coleridge, — gave it as his opinion in (letters subse- 
quently published) that the lady had been calumniated 
through a very ignoble cause, namely, mere ignorance 



CONVERSATION. 349 

of the French language, or, at least, non-farailiarity with 
the fluencies of oral French. Neither Goethe nor 
Schiller, though well acquainted with written French, 
had any command of it for purposes of rapid conversa- 
tion ; and Humboldt supposes that mere spite at the 
trouble which they found in limping after the lady so as 
to catch one thought that she uttered, had been the true 
cause of their unfavorable sentence upon her. Not 
malice aforethought, so much as vindictive fury for the 
sufferings they had endured, accounted for their severi- 
ty in the opinion of the diplomatic baron. He did not 
extend the same explanation to Coleridge's case, because, 
though even then in habits of intercourse with Coleridge, 
he had not heard of his interview with the lady, nor of 
the results from that interview ; else what was true of 
the two German wits was true a fortiori of Coleridge ; 
the Germans at least read French and talked it slowly, 
and occasionally understood it when talked by others. 
But Coleridge did none of these things. We are all 
of us well aware that Madame de Stael was not a tri- 
fler ; nay, that she gave utterance at times to truths as 
worthy to be held oracular as any that were uttered by 
the three inspired wits — all philosophers, and bound to 
truth — but all poets, and privileged to be wayward. 
This we may collect from these anecdotes, that people 
accustomed to colloquial despotism, and who wield a 
sceptre within a circle of their own, are no longer capa- 
ble of impartial judgments, and do not accommodate 
themselves with, patience, or even with justice, to the 
pretensions of rivals ; and were it only for this result of 
conversational tyranny, it calls clamorously for extinc- 
tion by some combined action upon the part of society. 



350 BEAUTIES OF DB QUINCEY. 

Is such a combination on the part of society possible 
as a sustained effort ? We imagine that it is in these 
times, and will be no more so in the times which are 
coming. Formerly the social meetings of men and 
women, except only in capital cities, were few ; and 
even in such cities the infusion of female influence was 
not broad and powerful enough for the correction of 
those great aberrations from just ideals which disfi- 
gured social intercourse. But great changes are proceed- 
ing ; were it only by the vast revolution in our means 
of intercourse, laying open every village to the conta- 
gion of social temptations, the world of western Europe 
is tending more and more to a mode of living in public. 
Under such a law of life, conversation becomes a vital 
interest of every hour, that can no more suff'er inter- 
ruption from individual caprice or arrogance than the 
animal process of respiration from transient disturbances 
of health. Once^ when travelling was rare, there was 
no fixed law for the usages of public rooms in inns or 
coffee-houses ; the courtesy of individuals was the tenure 
by which men held their rights. If a morose person de- 
tained the newspaper for hours, there was no remedy. 
At present, according to the circumstances of the case 
there are strict regulations, which secure to each indi- 
vidual his own share of the common rights. 

A corresponding change will gradually take place 
in the usages which regulate conversation. It will 
come to be considered an infringement of the general 
rights for any man to detain the conversation, or arrest 
its movement, for more than a short space of time, 
which gradually will be more and more defined. This 
one curtailment of arrogant pretensions will lead to 



CONYERSATION. 351 

others. Egotism will no longer freeze the openings to 
intellectual discussions ; and conversation will then be- 
come, what it never has been before, a powerful ally 
of education, and generally of self-culture. The main 
diseases that besiege conversation at present are — 
1st. The want of timing. Those who are not recalled, 
by a sense of courtesy and equity, to the continual re- 
membrance that, in appropriating too large a share of 
the conversation, they are committing a fraud upon 
their companions, are beyond all control of monitory 
hints or of reproof, which does not take a direct and 
open shape of personal remonstrance ; but this, where 
the purpose of the assembly is festive and convivial, 
bears too harsh an expression for most people's feel- 
ings. That objection, however, would not apply to 
any mode of admonition that was universally establish- 
ed. A public memento carries with it no personality. 
For instance, in the Roman law-courts, no advocate 
complained of the clepsydra, or water timepiece, which 
regulated the duration of his pleadings. Now, such a 
contrivance would not be impracticable at an after- 
dinner talk. To invert the clepsydra, when all the 
water had run out, would be an act open to any one 
of the guests, and liable to no misconstruction, when 
this check was generally applied, and understood to 
be a simple expression of public defence, not of private 
rudeness or personality. The clepsydra ought to be 
filled with some brilliantly-colored fluid, to be placed 
in the centre of the table, and with the capacity, at the 
very most, of the little minute-glasses used for regulat- 
ing the boiling of eggs. It would obviously be insup- 
portably tedious to turn the glass every two or three 



352 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

minutes ; but to do so occasionally would avail as a 
suJGTicient memento to the company. 2d. Conversation 
suffers from the want of some discretional power lodged 
in an individual for controlling its movements. Very 
often it sinks into flats of insipidity through mere acci- 
dent. Some trifle has turned its current upon ground 
where few of the company have anything to say — the 
commerce of thought languishes ; and the consciousness 
that it is languishing about a narrow circle, " unde pe- 
dem proferre pudor vetat," operates for the general re- 
frigeration of the company. Now, the ancient Greeks 
had an officer appointed over every convivial meeting, 
whose functions applied to all cases of doubt or inter- 
ruption that could threaten the genial harmony of the 
company. We also have such officers — presidents, 
vice-presidents, &g. ; and we need only to extend their 
powers, so that they may exercise over the movement 
of the conversation the beneficial influence of the Athe- 
nian symposiarch. At present the evil is, that conver- 
sation has no authorized originator ; it is servile to the 
accidents of the moment ; and generally these acci- 
debts are merely verbal. Some word or some name is 
dropped casually in the course of an illustration ; and 
that is allowed to suggest a topic, though neither in- 
teresting to the majority of the persons present, nor 
leading naturally into other collateral topics that are 
more so. Now, in such cases it will be the business of 
the symposiarch to restore the interest of the conversa- 
tion, and to rekindle its animation, by recalling it from 
any tracks of dulness or sterility into which it may have 
rambled. The natural excursiveness of colloquial in- 
tercourse, its tendency to advance by subtle links of 



CONVERSATION. 353 

association, is one of its advantages ; but mere vagran- 
cy from passive acquiescence in the direction given to 
it bj chance or by any verbal accident, is amongst its 
worst diseases. The business of the symposiarch will 
be, to watch these morbid tendencies, which are not 
the deviations of graceful freedom, but the distortions 
of imbecility and collapse. His business it will also 
be to derive occasions of discussion bearing a general 
and permanent interest from the fleeting events of the 
casual disputes of the day. His business again it will 
be to bring back a subject that has been imperfectly 
discussed, and has yielded but half of the interest which 
it promises, imder the interruption of any accident 
which may have carried the thoughts of the party into 
less attractive channels. Lastly, it should be an ex- 
press office of education to form a particular style, 
cleansed from verbiage, from elaborate parenthesis, and 
from circumlocution, as the only style fitted for a pur- 
pose which is one of pure enjoyment, and where every 
moment used by the speaker is deducted from a public 
stock. 

Many other suggestions for the improvement of con- 
versation might be brought forward within ampler 
limits ; and especially for that class of conversation 
which moves by discussion, a whole code of regulations 
might be proposed, that would equally promote the in- 
terests of the individual speakers and the public interests 
of the truth involved in the question discussed. Mean- 
time nobody is more aware than we are, that no style of 
conversation is more essentially vulgar than that which 
moves by disputation. This is the vice of the young 
and the inexperienced, but especially of those amongst 



354 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

them who are fresh from academic life. But discussion 
is not necessarily disputation ; and the two orders of 
conversation — that^ on the one hand, which contem- 
plates an interest of knowledge, and of the self-develop- 
ing intellect; that, on the other hand, which forms one 
and the widest amongst the gay embellishments of life 
— will always advance together. Whatever there may 
remain of illiberal in the first (for, according to the re- 
mark of Burke, there is always something illiberal in 
the severer aspects of study until balanced by the in- 
fluence of social amenities), will correct itself, or will 
tend to correct itself, by the model held up in the se- 
cond ; and thus the great organ of social intercourse, by 
means of speech, which hitherto has done little for man, 
except through the channel of its ministrations to the 
direct business of daily necessities, will at length rise 
into a rivalship with books, and become fixed amongst 
the alliances of intellectual progress, not less than 
amongst the ornamental accomplishments of convivial 
life. 



CRITIQUES AND REMINISCENCES. 



SHAKSPEARE. 

The station of Shakspeare in literature, is now irre- 
vocably settled, not so much (which happens in other 
cases) by a vast overbalance of favorable suffrages as 
by acclamation ; not so much by the voices of those 
who admire him up to the verge of idolatry, as by the 
acts of those who everywhere seek for his works among 
the primal necessities of life, demand them, and crave 
them as they do their daily bread ; not so much by 
eulogy openly proclaiming itself, as by the silent hom- 
age recorded in the endless multiplication of what he 
has bequeathed us ; not so much by his own compatriots, 
who, with regard to almost every other author, compose 
the total amount of his effective audience, as by the 
unanimous " all hail ! " of intellectual Christendom ; 
finally, not by the hasty partisanship of his own gene- 
ration, nor by the biased judgment of an age trained in 
the same modes of feeling and of thinking with himself, 
— but by the solemn award of generation succeeding to 
generation, of one age correcting the obliquities or pe- 
culiarities of another ; by the verdict of two hundred 
and thirty years, which have now elapsed since the very 
latest of his creations, or of two hundred and forty- 
seven years if we date from the earliest ; a verdict 
which has been continually revived and reopened, prob- 
ed, searched, vexed by criticism in every spirit, from 
the most genial and intelligent, down to the most ma- 
lignant and scurrilously hostile which feeble heads and 
(357) 



358 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

great ignorance suggest when cooperating with impure 
hearts and narrow sensibilities ; a verdict, in short, sus- 
tained, and countersigned by a longer series of writers, 
many of them eminent for wit or learning, than were 
ever before congregated upon any inquest relating to 
any author, be he who he might, ancient or modern, 
Pagan or Christian. It was a most witty saying with 
respect to a piratical and knavish publisher, who made 
a trade of insulting the memories of deceased authors 
by forged writings, that he was " among the new ter- 
rors of death." But in the gravest sense it may be 
affirmed of Shakspeare, that he is among the modern 
luxuries of life ; that life, in fact, is a new thing, and 
one more to be coveted, since Shakspeare has extended 
the domains of human consciousness, and pushed its 
dark frontiers into regions not so much as dimly descri- 
ed or even suspected before his time, far less illuminated 
(as now they are) by beauty and tropical luxuriance of 
life. 

0, mighty poet ! Thy works are not as those of other 
men, simply and merely great works of art ; but are 
also like the phenomena of nature, like the sun and the 
sea, the stars and the flowers, — like frost and snow, 
rain and dew, hail-storm and thunder, which are to be 
studied with entire submission of our own faculties, and 
in the perfect faith that in them there can be no too much 
or too little, nothing useless or inert, but that, the fur- 
ther we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see 
proofs of design and self-supporting arrangement where 
the careless eye had seen nothing but accident ! 



MILTON. 

So accustomed are we to survey a great man through 
the cloud of years that has gathered around him — 
so impossible is it to detach him from the pomp and 
equipage of all who have quoted him, copied him, echo- 
ed him, lectured about him, disputed about him, quar- 
relled about him, that in the case of any Anacharsis the 
Scythian coming amongst us — any savage, that is to 
say, uninstructed in our literature, but speaking our 
language, and feeling an interest in our great men — a 
man could hardly believe at first how perplexed he 
would feel — how utterly at a loss for any adequate 
answer to this question, suddenly proposed — ''WJio 
and what was Milton ?^^ That is to say, what is the 
place which he fills in his own vernacular literature ? 
what station does he hold in universal literature ? 

We, if abruptly called upon in that summary fashion 
to convey a commensurate idea of Milton, one which 
might at once correspond to his pretensions, and yet be 
readily intelligible to the savage, should answer perhaps 
thus — Milton is not an author amongst authors, not a 
poet amongst poets, but a power amongst powers ; and 
the Paradise Lost is not a book amongst books, not a 
poem amongst poems, but a central force amongst forces. 
Let us explain. There is this great distinction amongst 
books ; some, though possibly the best in their class, 
are still no more than books — not indispensable, not 
incapable of supplementary representation by other 
(359) 



360 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

books. If they had never been — if their place had 
continued for ages unfilled — not the less, upon a suffi- 
cient excitement arising, there would always have been 
found the ability, either directly to fill up the vacancy, 
or at least to meet the same passion virtually, though 
by a work differing in form. 

But, with regard to Milton and the Miltonic power, 
the case is far otherwise. If the man had failed, the 
power would have failed. In that mode of power 
which he wielded, the function was exhausted in the 
man — species was identified with the individual — the 
poetry was incarnated in the poet. 

Let it be remembered, that, of all powers which act 
upon man through his intellectual nature, the very rarest 
is that which we moderns call the Sublime. The 
Grecians had apparently no word for it, unless it were 
that which they meant by to oyH0}86g : for vi/jog was a 
comprehensive expression for all qualities which gave a 
character of grace or animation to the composition, such 
even as were philosophically opposed to the sublime. 
In the Roman poetry, and especially in Lucan, at times 
also Juvenal, there is an exhibition of a moral sublime, 
perfectly distinct from anything known to the Greek 
poetry. The delineations of republican grandeur, as 
expressing itself through the principal leaders in the 
Roman camps, or the trampling under foot of ordinary 
superstitions, as given in the reasons assigned to Labie- 
nus for passing the oracle of the Lybian Jupiter uncon- 
sulted, are in a style to which there is nothing corres- 
ponding in the whole Grecian literature, nor would they 
have been comprehensible to an Athenian. The famous 
line — " Jupiter est quodcunque vides, quodcunque 



MILTON. 861 

moveris," and the brief review of such questions as 
might be worthy of an oracular god, with the summary 
declaration, that every one of those points we know 
already by the light of nature, and could not know 
them better though Jupiter Amnion himself were to im- 
press them on our attention — 

" Scimus, et haec nobis non altius inseret Ammon : " 

all this is truly Roman in its sublimity ; and so exclu- 
sively Roman, that there, and not in poets like the Au- 
gustan, expressly modelling their poems on Grecian 
types, ought the Roman mind to be studied. 

On the other hand, for that species of the sublime 
which does not rest purely and merely on moral ener- 
gies, but on a synthesis between man and nature — for 
what may properly be called the Ethico -physical Sub- 
lime — there is but one great model surviving in the 
Greek poetry, viz. the gigantic drama of the Prome- 
theus crucified on Mount Elborus. And this drama 
differs so much from everything else, even in the poetry 
of ^schylus, as the mythus itself differs so much from 
all the rest of the Grecian mythology, (belonging ap- 
parently to an age and a people more gloomy, austere, 
and nearer to the incunabula mundi, than tliose which 
bred the gay and sunny surperstitions of Greece,) that 
much curiosity and speculation have naturally gathered 
round the subject of late years. Laying this one insu- 
lated case apart, and considering that the Hebrew poe- 
try of Isaiah and Ezekiel, as having the benefit of in- 
spiration, does not lie within the just limits of compe- 
tition, we may affirm that there is no human composition 
which can bo challenged as constitutionally sublime -— 
16 



862 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

sublime equally by its conception and by its execution, 
or as uniformly sublime from first to last, excepting the 
Paradise Lost In Milton only, first and last, is the 
power of the sublime revealed. In Milton only does this 
great agency blaze and glow as a furnace kept up to a 
white heat — without intermission and without collapse. 



WORDSWORTH. 



Haydon, the eminent painter, in his great picture of 
Christ'' s Entry into Jerusalem, has introduced Words- 
worth in the character of a disciple attending his Divine 
Master. This fact is well known, and as the picture 
itself is tolerably well known to the public eye, there 
are multitudes now living who will have seen a very im- 
pressive likeness of Wordsworth — some consciously, 
some not suspecting it. There will, however, always 
be many who have not seen any portrait at all of 
Wordsworth ; and therefore I will describe its general 
outline and efi'ect. It was a face of the long order, 
often falsely classed as oval ; but a greater mistake is 
made by many people in supposing the long face, which 
prevailed so remarkably in the Elizabethan and Caroli- 
nian periods, to have become extinct in our days. Miss 
Ferrier, in one of her brilliant novels, (" Marriage," I 
think), makes a Highland girl protest that " no English- 
man t^i7/i Ids round face ^^ shall ever wean her heart 
from her own country ; but England is not the land of 
round faces — and those in Westmoreland especially, 



WORDSWORTH. 363 

the ancient long face of the Elizabethan period, power- 
fully resembling in all its lineaments the ancient Roman 
face, and often (though not so uniformly) the face of 
northern Italy in modern times. Wordsworth's face was, 
if not absolutely the indigenous face of the Lake dis- 
trict, at any rate a variety of that face, a modification 
of that original type. The head was well filled out , 
and there, to begin with, was a great advantage over the 
head of Charles Lamb, which was absolutely truncated 
in the posterior region — sawn off, as it were, by no 
timid sawyer. The forehead was not remarkably lofty 
— and, by the way, some artists, in their ardor for real- 
izing their phrenological preconceptions, not suffering 
nature to surrender quietly and by slow degrees, her 
own alphabet of signs, and characters, and hieroglyphi- 
cal expressions, but forcing her language prematurely 
into a conformity with their own crude speculations, 
have given to Sir Walter Scott a pile of forehead which 
is unpleasing and cataphysical, in fact, a caricature of 
anything that is ever seen in nature, and would (if real) 
be esteemed a deformity ; in one instance, that which 
was introduced in some annual or other, the forehead 
makes about two thirds of the entire face. Words- 
worth's forehead is also liable to caricature misrepre- 
sentations, in these days of phrenology : but, whatever 
it may appear to be in any man's fanciful portrait, the 
real living forehead, as I have been in the habit of see- 
ing it for more than five-and-twenty years, is not re- 
markable for its height ; but it is perhaps remarkable 
for its breadth and expansive development. Neither 
are the eyes of Wordsworth " large," as is erroneously 
stated somewhere in " Peter's Letters ; " on the con 



364 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

trary, they are (I think) rather small ; but that does 
not interfere with their effect, which at times is fme and 
suitable to his intellectual character. At times, I say, 
or the depth and subtlety of eyes varies exceedingly 
with the state of the stomach ; and, if young ladies 
were aware of the magical transformations which can 
be wrought in tlie depth and sweetness of the eye by a 
few weeks' walking exercise, I fancy we should see their 
habits in this point altered greatly for the better. I 
have seen Wordsworth's eyes oftentimes affected power- 
fully in this respect ; his eyes are not, under any cir- 
stances, bright, lustrous, or piercing; but, after a long 
day's toil in walking, I have seen them assume an ap- 
pearance the most solemn and spiritual that it is possi- 
.ble for the human eye to wear. The light which resides 
in them is at no time a superficial light ; but, under 
favoraWe accidents, it is a light which seems to come 
from depths below all depths ; in fact, it is more truly 
entitled to be held " The light tliat never was on land 
or sea," a light radiating from some far spiritual world, 
than any the most idealizing light that ever yet a paint- 
er's hand created. The nose, a little arched, and large, 
which, by the way, (according to a natural phrenology, 
existing centuries ago amongst some of the lowest 
amongst the human species), has always been accounted 
an unequivocal expression of animal appetites organically 
strong. And that was in fact the basis of Wordsworth's 
intellectual power : his intellectual passions were fer 
vent and strong ; because they rested upon a basis of 
animal sensibility superior to that of most men, diffused 
through all the animal passions (or appetites) ; and 
something of that will be found to hold of all poets who 



WORDSWORTH. 365 

have been great by original force and power, not (as 
Virgil) by means of fine mauagement and exquisite 
artifice of composition applied to their conceptions. The 
mouth, and the region of the mouth, the whole circum- 
jacencies of the mouth, were about the strongest feature 
in Wordsworth's face ; there was nothing specially to 
be noticed that I know of, in the mere outline of the 
lips ; but the swell and protrusion of the parts above 
and around the mouth, are both noticeable in themselves, 
and also because they remind me of a very interesting 
fact which I discovered about three years after this my 
first visit to Wordsworth. 

Being a great collector of everything relating to Mil- 
ton, I had naturally possessed myself, whilst yet very 
young, of Richardson the painter's thick octavo vol- 
ume of notes on the " Paradise Lost." It happened, 
however, that my copy, in consequence of that mania 
for portrait collecting which has stripped so many Eng 
lish classics of their engraved portraits, had no picture 
of Milton. Subsequently I ascertained that it ought to 
have had a very good likeness of the great poet ; and 
I never rested until I procured a copy of the book, 
which had not suffered in this respect by the fatal ad- 
miration of the amateur. The particular copy offered 
to me was one which had been priced unusually high, 
on account of the unusually fine specimen which it con- 
tained of the engraved portrait. This, for a particular 
reason, I was exceedingly anxious to see ; and the rea- 
son was — that,- according to an anecdote reported by 
Richardson himself, this portrait, of all that was shown 
to her, was the only one acknowledged, by Milton's 



366 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

last surviving daughterj to be a strong likeness of lier 
father. 

Judge of my astonishment, when, in this portrait of 
Milton, I saw a likeness nearly perfect of Wordsworth, 
better by much than any which I have since seen, of 
those expressly painted for himself. The likeness is 
tolerably preserved in that by Carruthers, in which one 
of the little Rydal waterfalls, &c., composes a back- 
ground ; yet this is much inferior, as a mere portrait 
of Wordsworth, to the Richardson head of Milton ; and 
this, I believe, is the last which represents Wordsworth 
in the vigor of his power. The rest, which I have not 
seen, may be better as works of art, (for anything I 
know to the contrary,) but they must labor under the 
great disadvantage of presenting the features when 
" defeatured" in the degree and the way I have de- 
scribed, by the idiosyncrasies of old age, as it affects 
this family; for it is noticed of the Wordsworths, by 
those who are familiar with their peculiarities, that, in 
their very blood and constitutional differences, lie hid- 
den causes, able, in some mysterious way — 

" Those shocks of passion to prepare 
That kill the bloom before its time, 
And blanch, without the owner's crime. 

The most resplendent hair." 

Some people, it is notorious, live faster than others ; 
the oil is burned out sooner in one constitution than 
another — and the cause of this maybe various; but, 
in the Wordsworths, one part of the cause is, no doubt, 
the secret fire of a temperament too fervid ; the self- 
consuming energies of the brain, that gnaw at the heart 



WORDSWORTH. 367 

and life-strings for ever. In that account which " The 
Excursion," presents to us of an imaginary Scotsman, 
who, to still the tumult of his heart, when visiting the 
" forces " (t. e. cataracts) of a mountainous region, 
obliges himself to study the laws of light and color, as 
they affect the rainbow of the stormy waters ; vainly 
attempting to mitigate the fever which consumed him 
by entangling his mind in profound speculations ; rais- 
ing a cross-fire of artillery from the subtilizing intellect, 
under the vain conceit that, in this way, he could si- 
lence the mighty battery of his impassioned brain — 
there we read a picture of Wordsworth and his own 
youth. In Miss Wordsworth, every thoughtful gbserver 
might read the same self-consuming style of thought. 
And the effect upon each was so powerful for the pro- 
motion of a premature old age, and of a premature ex- 
pression of old age, that strangers invariably supposed 
them fifteen to twenty years older than they were. 
And I remember Wordsworth once laughingly report- 
ing to me, on returning from a short journey in 1809, 
a little personal anecdote, which sufficiently showed 
what was the spontaneous impression upon that subject 
of casual strangers, whose feelings were not confused 
by previous knowledge of the truth. He was travel- 
ling by a stage-coach, and seated outside, amongst a 
good half dozen of fellow-passengers. One of these, 
an elderly man, who confessed to having passed the 
grand climacterical year (9 multiplied into 7) of 63, 
though he did not say precisely by how many years, 
said to Wordsworth, upon some anticipations which 
they had been mutually discussing of changes likely to 
result from enclosures, &c., then going on or project- 



368 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCET. 

ing — " Ay, ay, another dozen of years will show us 
strange sights ; but you and I can hardly expect to 
see them." " How so ?" said W. " Why, my friend, 
how old do you take me to be ?" " Oh, I beg pardon," 
said the other ; " I meant no offence — but what ?" 
looking at W. more attentively — "you'll never see 
threescore, I'm of opinion." And, to show that he was 
not singular in so thinking, he appealed to all the other 
passengers ; and the motion passed nem. con. that 
Wordsworth was rather over than under sixty. Upon 
this he told them the literal truth — that he had not 
yet accomplished his thirty-ninth year. " God bless 
me !" said the climacterical man ; so then, after all, 
you'll have a chance to see your childer get up like, 
and get settled ! God bless me, to think of that !" 
And so closed the conversation, leaving to W. a point- 
ed expression, of his own premature age, as revealing 
itself by looks, in this unaffected astonishment, amongst 
a whole party of plain men, that he should really be- 
long to a generation of the forward-looking, who live 
by hope ; and might reasonably expect to see a child 
of seven years old matured into a man . 

I have gone into so large and circumstantial a review 
of my recollections in a matter that would have been 
trifling and tedious in excess, had their recollection re 
la ted to a less important man ; but, with a certain 
knowledge that the least of them will possess a lasting 
and a growing interest in connection with William 
Wordsworth — a man who is not simply destined to be 
had in everlasting remembrance by every generation of 
men, but (which is a modification of the kind worth any 
multiplication of the degree) to be had in that sort of 



WORDSWORTH. 369 

remembrance which has for its shrine the heart of man 
— that world of fear and grief, of love and trembling 
hope, which constitutes the essential man ; in that sort 
of remembrance, and not in such a remembrance as we 
grant to the ideas of a great philosopher, a great mathe- 
matician, or a great reformer. How different, how pe- 
culiar, is the interest which attends the great poets who 
have made themselves necessary to the human heart ; 
who have first brought into consciousness, and next 
have clothed in words, those grand catholic feelings 
that belong to the grand catholic situations of life, 
through all its stages ; who have clothed them in such 
words that human wit despairs of bettering them ! How 
remote is that burning interest which settles upon men's 
living memories in our daily thoughts, from that which 
follows, in a disjointed and limping way, the mere nomi- 
nal memories of those who have given a direction and 
movement to the currents of human thought, and who, 
by some leading impulse, have even quickened into life 
speculations appointed to terminate in positive revolu- 
tions of human power over physical agents ! Mighty 
were the powers, solemn and serene is the memory, of 
Archimedes : and Appolonius shines like " the starry 
Galileo," in the firmament of human genius ; yet how 
frosty is the feeling associated with these names by 
comparison with that, which, upon every sunny brae, by 
the side of every ancient forest, even in the farthest 
depths of Canada, many a young innocent girl, perhaps 
at this very moment — looking now with fear to the 
dark recesses of the infinite forest, and now with love 
to the pages of the infinite poet, until the fear is absorb- 
ed and forgotten in the love — cherishes in her heart 



370 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

foi the name and person of Shakspeare ! The one is 
abstraction, and a shadow recurring only by distinct 
efforts of recollection and even tlius to none but the 
enlightened and the learned ; the other is a household 
image, rising amongst household remembrances, never 
separated from the spirit of delight, and hallowed by a 
human love ! Such a place in the affections of the 
young and the ingenuous, no less than of the old and 
philosophic, who happen to have any depth of feeling, 
will Wordsworth occupy in every clime and in every 
land ; for the language in which he writes, thanks be 
to Providence, which has beneficently opened the widest 
channels for the purest and most elevating literature, 
is now ineradicably planted in all quarters of the earth ; 
the echoes under every latitude of every longitude now 
reverberate English words ; and all things seem tend- 
ing to this result — that the English and the Spanish 
languages will finally share the earth between them. 
Wordsworth is peculiarly the poet for the solitary and 
meditative; and, throughout the countless myriads of 
future America and future Australia, no less than Poly- 
nesia and Southern Africa, there will be situations with- 
out end, fitted by their lonelinesss to favor his influence 
for centuries to come, by the end of which period it may 
be anticipated that education (of a more enlightened 
quality and more systematic than yet prevails) may 
have wrought such changes on the human species, as 
will uphold the growth of all philosophy, and, there- 
fore, of all poetry which has its foundations laid in the 
heart of man. 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 

It was, I think, in the month of August, but certain- 
yin the summer season, and certainly in the year 1807, 
that I first saw this illustrious man, the largest and 
most spacious intellect, the subtlest and the most com- 
prehensive, in my judgment, that has yet existed 
amongst men. My knowledge of him as a man of most 
original genius began about the year 1799. A little 
before that time, Mr. Wordsworth had published the 
first edition (in a single volume) of the " Lyrical Bal- 
lads," at the end or the beginning of which was placed 
Mr. Coleridge's poem of the " Ancient Mariner," as the 
contribution of an anonymous friend. It would be di- 
recting the reader's attention too much to myself, if I 
were to linger upon this, the greatest event in the un- 
folding of my own mind. Let me say in one word, that, 
at a period when neither the one nor the other writer was 
valued by the public — both having a long warfare to 
accomplish of contumely and ridicule before they could 
rise into their present estimation — I found in these 
poems " the ray of a new morning," and an absolute 
revelation of untrodden worlds, teeming with power and 
beauty, as yet unsuspected amongst men. 

I had received directions for finding out the house 
where Coleridge was visting ; and, in riding down a main 
street of Bridge water, I noticed a gateway correspond- 
ing to the description given me. Under this was stand- 
ing, and gazing about him, a man whom I shall describe. 
In height he might seem to be about five feet eight ; (he 

(371) 



372 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

was, in reality, about an inch and a half taller, but his 
figure was of an order which drowns the height ;) his 
person was broad and full, and tended even to corpu- 
lence ; his complexion was fair, though not what paint- 
ers technically style fair, because it was associated with 
black hair ; his eyes were large and soft in their ex- 
pression ; and it was from the peculiar appearance of 
haze or dreaminess, which mixed with their light, that I 
recognized my object. This was Coleridge. I examined 
him steadfastly for a minute or more ; and it struck me 
that he saw neitlier myself nor any other object in tho 
street. He was in a deep reverie ; for I had dismount- 
ed, made two or three trifling arrangements at an inn 
door, and advanced close to him, before he had appa- 
rently become conscious of my presence. The sound 
of my voice, announcing my own name, first awoke him ; 
he started, and for a moment seemed at a loss to under- 
stand my purpose or his own situation ; for he repeated 
rapidly a number of words which had no relation to 
either of us. There was no mauvaise honle in his man- 
ner, but simple perplexity, and an apparent difficulty in 
recovering his position amongst daylight realities. This 
little scene over, he received me with a kindness of 
manner so marked, that it might be called gracious. 
The hospitable family with whom he was domesticated, 
were distinguished for their amiable manners and en- 
lightened understandings ; they were descendants from 
Chubb, the philosophic writer, and bore the same name. 
For Coleridge, they all testified deep afi'ection and 
esteem — sentiments in which the whole town of Bridge 
water seemed to share ; for in the evening, when the 
heat of the day had declined, I walked out with him ; 



COLERIDGE. ,S73 

and rarely, perhaps never, have I seen a person so much 
interrupted in one hour's space as Coleridge, on this 
occasion, by the courteous attentions of young and old. 
Coleridge led me to a drawing-room, rang the bell 
for refreshments, and omitted no point of a courteous 
reception. He told me that there would be a very 
large dinner party on that day, which, perhaps, might 
be disagreeable to a perfect stranger ; but, if not, he 
could assure me of a most hospitable welcome from the 
family. I was too anxious to see him under all aspects, 
to think of declining this invitation. And these little 
points of business being settled — Coleridge, like some 
great river, the Orellana, or the St. Lawrence, that had 
been checked and fretted by rocks or thwarting islands, 
and suddenly recovers its volume of waters, and its 
mighty music — swept at once, as if returning to his 
natural business, into a continuous strain of eloquent 
dissertation, certainly the most novel, the most finely 
illustrated, and traversing the most spacious fields of 
thought, by transitions the most just and logical, that it 
was possible to conceive. What I mean by saying that 
his transitions were "just," is by way of contradistinc 
tion to that mode of conversation which courts variety 
by means of verbal connections. Coleridge, to many 
people, and often I have heard the complaint, seemed 
to wander : and he seemed then to wander the most, 
when in fact his resistance to the wandering instinct 
was greatest, — viz. when the compass, and huge circuit, 
by which his illustrations moved, travelled farthest into 
remote regions, before they began to revolve. Long 
before this coming-round commenced, most people had 
lost him, and naturally enough supposed that he had lost 



874 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

himself. They continued to admire the separate beauty 
of the thoughts, but did not see their relations to the 
dominant theme. Had the conversation been thrown 
upon paper, it might have been easy to trace the con- 
tinuity of the links : just as in Bishop Berkeley's Siris, 
from a pedestal so low and abject, so culinary, as Tar 
Water, the method of preparing it, and its medicinal 
effects, the dissertation ascends, like Jacob's ladder, by 
just gradations, into the Heaven of Heavens, and the 
thrones of the Trinity. But Heaven is there connected 
with earth by the Homeric chain of gold ; and being 
subject to steady examination, it is easy to trace the 
links. Whereas, in conversation, the loss of a single 
word may cause the whole cohesion to disappear from 
view. However, I can assert, upon my long and in- 
timate knowledge of Coleridge's mind, that logic, the 
most severe, was as inalienable from his modes of think- 
ing, as grammar from his language. 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 



There are three readers of Coleridge's Ancient Mari- 
ner. The first is gross enough to fancy all the imagery 
of the mariner's visions delivered by the poet, for actual 
facts of experience ; which being impossible, the whole 
pulverizes, for that reader, into a baseless fairy tale. 

The second reader is wiser than that ; he knows that 
the imagery is not baseless ; it is the imagery of febrile 
delirium, really seen, but not seen as an external reali- 



THE ANCIENT MARINER. 875 

ty. The mariner had caught the pestilential fever, 
which carried off all his mates ; he only had survived — 
the delirium had vanished ; but the visions that had 
haunted the delirium, remained. 

" Yes," says the third reader, " they remained ; 
naturally they did, being scorched by fever into his 
brain ; but how did they happen to remain on his be- 
lief as gospel truths ? The delirium had vanished^ ex- 
cept as visionary memorials of a sorrow that was can- 
celled ? Why was it that craziness settled upon this 
mariner's brain, driving him, as if he were a Cain or 
another Wandering Jew, to "pass like night — from 
land to land," and, at uncertain intervals, wrenching 
him until he made rehearsal of his errors, even at the 
hard price of " holding children from their play and 
old men from the chimney-corner"? That craziness 
as the third reader dechipers, rose out of a deeper soil 
than any bodily affection. It had its root in peniten- 
tial sorrow. 0, bitter is the sorrow to a conscientious 
heart when too late it discovers the depth of a love 
that has been trampled under foot ! That mariner had 
slain the creature, that on all the earth, loved him best. 
In the darkness of his cruel superstition he had done 
it, to save his human brothers from a fancied incon- 
venience : and yet by that very act of cruelty, he had 
himself called destruction on their heads. The Neme- 
sis that followed punished him through them — him 
that wronged, through those that wrongfully he sought 
to benefit. That spirit who watches over the sanctities 
of love is a strong angel — is a jealous angel, and this 
angel it was 

" That loved the bird, that loved the man 
That shot him "with his bow." 



376 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

He it was that followed the cruel archer into silent and 
slumbering seas : — 

" Nine fathoms deep he had followed him 
Through the realms of mist and snow." 

This jealous angel it was that pursued the man into 
noonday darkness, and the vision of dying oceans, into 
delirium, and finally, (when recovered from disease) 
into an unsettled mind. 



SOUTHEY. 

I HAD been directed to ask for Greta Hall, which, 
with some little difficulty, I found ; for it stands out of 
the town a few hundred yards, upon a little eminence 
overhanging the river Greta. It was about seven 
o'clock when I reached Southey's door ; for I had stop- 
ped to dine at a little public house in Threlkeld, and 
had walked slowly for the last two hours in the dark. 
The arrival of a stranger occasioned a little sensation in 
the house ; and, by the time the front door could be open- 
ed, I saw Mrs. Coleridge, and a gentleman whom I could 
not doubt to be Southey, standing, very hospitably, to 
greet my entrance. Southey was, in person, somewhat 
taller than Wordsworth, being about five feet eleven in 
height, or a trifle more, whilst Wordsworth was about 
five feet ten ; and, partly from having slender limbs, 
partly from being more symmetrically formed about the 
shoulders than Wordsworth, he struck one as a better 
and lighter figure, to the effect of which his dress con- 



SOUTHET. 377 

tributed ; for he wore pretty constantly a short jacket 
and pantaloons, and had much the air of a Tyrolese 
mountaineer. 

His face I profess myself unable to describe accurate- 
ly. His hair was black, and yet his complexion was 
fair ; his eyes I believe to be hazel and large ; but I 
will not vouch for that fact : his nose aquiline ; and he 
has a remarkable habit of looking up into the air, as if 
looking at abstractions. The expression of his face was 
that of a very acute and an aspiring man. So far, it 
was even noble, as it conveyed a feeling of a serene and 
gentle pride, habitually familiar with elevating subjects 
of contemplation. And yet it was impossible that this 
pride could have been offensive to anybody, chastened 
as it was by the most unaffected modesty ; and this mod- 
esty made evident and prominent by the constant ex- 
pression of reverence for the great men of the age, 
(when he happened to esteem them such,) and for all 
the great patriarchs of our literature. The point in 
which Southey's manner failed the most in conciliating 
regard, was, in all which related to tlie external expres- 
sions of friendliness. No man could be more sincerely 
hospitable — no man more essentially disposed to give 
up even his time (the possession which he most valued) 
to the service of his friends. But there was an air of 
reserve and distance about him — the reserve of a loftv, 
self-respecting mind, but, perhaps, a little too freezing 
— in his treatment of all persons who were not among 
the corps of his ancient fireside friends. Still, even 
towards the veriest strangers, it is but justice to notice 
his extreme courtesy in sacrificing his literary employ- 
ments for the day, whatever they might be, to the duty 



378 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

(for such he made it) of doing the honors of the lake, 
and the adjacent mountains. 

Southey was at that time, (1807,) and has continued 
ever since, the most industrious of all literary men on 
record. A certain task he prescribed to himself every 
morning before breakfast. This could not be a very 
long one, for he breakfasted at nine, or soon after, and 
never rose before eight, though he went to bed duly at 
half-past ten ; but, as I have many times heard him say, 
less than nine hours' sleep he found insufficient. From 
breakfast to a latish dinner (about half after five or 
six) was his main period of literary toil. After dinner, 
according to the accident of having or not having visit- 
ors in the house, he sat over his wine ; or he retired 
to his library again, from which, about eight, he was 
summoned to tea. But generally speaking, he closed 
his literary toils at dinner ; the whole of the hours after 
that meal being dedicated to his correspondence. This, 
it may be supposed, was unusually large, to occupy so 
much of his time, for his letters rarely extended to any 
length. At that period, the post, by way of Penrith, 
reached Keswick about six or seven in the evening. 
And so pointedly regular was Southey in all his habits, 
that, short as the time was, all letters were answered on 
the same evening which brought them. At tea, he read 
the London papers. It was perfectly astonishing to men 
of less methodical habits, to find how much he got 
through of elaborate business by his unvarying system 
of arrangement in the distribution of his time. 



CHARLES LAMB. 



Let me describe my brief introductory call upon 
Lamb at the India House. I had been told that he was 
never to be found at home except in the evenings; 
and to have called then would have been, in a manner, 
forcing myself upon his hospitalities, and at a moment 
when he might have confidential friends about him ; be- 
sides that, he was sometimes tempted away to the 
theatres. I went, therefore, to the India House ; made 
inquiries amongst the servants ; and, after some trouble, 
(for that was early in his Leadenhall Street career, and 
possibly, he was not much known), I was shown into a 
small room, or else a small section of a large one, 
(thirty-four years affects one's remembrance of some 
circumstances), in which was a very lofty writing-desk, 
separated by a still higher railing from that part of the 
floor on which the profane — the laity, like myself— 
were allowed to approach the clerus, or clerkly rulers 
of the room. Within the railing, sat, to the best of 
my remembrance, six quill-driving gentlemen ; not 
gentlemen whose duty or profession it was merely to 

drive the quill, but who were then driving it g-ens de 

plume, such in esse, as well as in posse — in act as well 
as habit ; for, as if they supposed me a spy, sent by 
some superior power, to report upon the situation of 
affairs as surprised by me, they were all too profoundly 
immersed in their oriental studies to have any sense of 
r379) 



880 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCE Y. 

mj presence. Consequently, I was reduced to a ne- 
cessity of announcing myself and my errand. I walked, 
therefore, into one of the two open doorways of the 
railing, and stood closely by the high stool of him who 
occupied the first place within the little aisle. I touch- 
ed his arm, by way of recalling him from his lofty Lead- 
enhall speculations to this sublunary world ; and, pre- 
senting my letter, asked if that gentleman (pointing to 
the address) were really a citizen of the present room ; 
for I had been repeatedly misled, by the directions 
given me, into wrong rooms. The gentleman smiled ; 
it was a smile not to be forgotten. This was Lamb. 
And here occurred a very^ veryWtilQ incident — one of 
those which pass so fugitively that they are gone and 
hurrying away into Lethe almost before your attention 
can have arrested them ; but it was an incident which, 
to me, who happened to notice it, served to express the 
courtesy and delicate consideration of Lamb's manners. 
The seat upon which he sat was a very high one ; so ab- 
surdly high, by the way, that I can imagine no possible 
use or sense in such an altitude, unless it were to restrain 
the occupant from playing truant at the fire, by opposing 
Alpine difficulties to his descent. 

Whatever might be the original purpose of this aspir- 
ing seat, one serious dilemma arose from it, and this it 
was which gave the occasion to Lamb's act of courtesy. 
Somewhere there is an anecdote, meant to illustrate the 
ultra-obsequiousness of the man : either I have heard 
of it in connection with some actual man known to my- 
self, or it is told in a book of some historical coxcomb 
— that being on horseback, and meeting some person or 
other whom it seemed advisable to flatter, he actually 



CHARLES LAMB. 381 

dismounted, in order to pay his court by a more cere- 
monious bow. In Russia, as we all know, this was, at 
one time, upon meeting any of the Imperial family, an 
act of legal necessity : and there, accordingly, but there 
only, it would have worn no ludicrous aspect. Now, 
in this situation of Lamb's, the act of descending from 
his throne, a very elaborate process, with steps and 
stages analogous to those on horseback — of slipping 
your right foot out of the stirrup, throwing your log 
over the crupper, &c. — was, to all intents and purposes, 
the same thing as dismounting from a great elephant of 
a horse. Therefore it both was, and was felt to be by 
Lamb, supremely ludicrous. On the other hand, to 
have sate still and stately upon this aerial station, to 
have bowed condescendingly from this altitude, would 
have been — not ludicrous indeed ; performed by a very 
superb person, and supported by a very superb bow, it 
might have been vastly fine, and even terrifying to many 
young gentlemen under sixteen ; but it would have had 
an air of imgentlemanly assumption. Between these 
extremes, therefore, Lamb had to choose : — between 
appearing ridiculous himself for a moment, by going 
through a ridiculous evolution, which no man could ex- 
ecute with grace; or, on the other hand, appearing 
lofty and assuming, in a degree which his truly humble 
nature (for he was the humblest of men in the preten- 
sions which he put forward for himself) must have 
shrunk from with horror. Nobody who knew Lamb 
can doubt how the problem was solved ; he began to 
dismount instantly ; and as it happened that the very 
first round of his descent obliged him to turn his back 
upon me as if for a sudden purpose of flight, he had an 



382 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

excuse for laughing ; which he did heartily - — saying, 
at the same time, something to this effect, that I must 
not judge from first appearances ; that he should re- 
volve upon me ; that he was not going to fly ; and other 
facetiae, whicli challenged a general laugh from the 
clerical brotherhood. 

When he had reached the basis of terra firma on 
which I was standing, naturally, as a mode of thanking 
him for his courtesy, I presented my hand ; which, in a 
general case, I should certainly not have done ; for I 
cherished, in an ultra-English degree, the English cus 
tom (a wise custom) of bowing in frigid silence on a 
first introduction to a stranger ; but to a man of literary 
talent, and one who had just practised so much kindness 
in my favor at so probable a hazard to himself of being 
laughed at for his pains, I could not maintain that 
frosty reserve. Lamb took my hand ; did not absolutely 
reject it : but rather repelled my advance by his man- 
ner. This, however, long afterwards I found, was only 
a habit derived from his too great sensitiveness to the 
variety of people's feelings, which run through a gamut 
so infinite of degrees and modes as to make it unsafe 
for any man who respects himself, to be too hasty in 
his allowances of familiarity. Lamb had, as he was 
entitled to have, a high self-respect ; and me he proba- 
bly suspected (as a young Oxonian) of some aristocra- 
tic tendencies. The letter of introduction, containing 
(I imagine) no matters of business, was speedily run 
through ; and I instantly received an invitation to spend 
the evening with him. Lamb was not one of those who 
catch at the chance of escaping from a bore by fixing 
some distant day, when accidents (in duplicate propor- 



CHARLES LAMB. 383 

tion, pf3rhaps to the number of interveiiing days) may 
have carried you away from the place ; he sought to 
benefit by no luck of that kind ; for he was, witli his 
limited income — and I say it deliberately — positively 
the most hospitable man I have known in this world. 
That night, the same night, I was to come and spend 
the evening with him. I had gone to the India House 
with the express purpose of accepting whatever invita- 
tion he should give me ; and, therefore, I accepted this, 
took my leave, and left Lamb in the act of resuming 
his aerial position. 

It is for ever to be regretted that so many of Lamb's 
jests, repartees, and pointed sayings, should have per- 
ished irrecoverably ; and from their fugitive brilliancy, 
which, (as Sergeant Talfourd remarks,) often dazzled 
too much to allow of the memory coolly retracing them 
some hours afterwards ; it is also to be regretted that 
many have been improperly reported. One, for in- 
stance, which had been but half told to his biographer, 
was more circumstantially and more effectually related 
thus, in my hearing, at Professor Wilson's, by Dr. 
Bowring, soon after the occasion. It occurred at Mr. 
Coleridge's weekly party at Highgate. Somebody had 
happened to mention that letter of Dr. Pococke, upon 
the Arabic translation of Grotius de Yeritate Fidel 
Christ., in which he exposes the want of authority for 
the trite legend of Mahomet's pigeon, and justly in- 
sists upon the necessity of expunging a fable so certain 
to disgust learned Mussulmans, before the books were 
circulated in the East. This occasioned a conversation 
generally, upon the Mahometan creed, theology, and 
morals ; in the course of which, some young man, in- 



384 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

troduced by Edward Irving, had thought fit to pro- 
nounce a splendid declamatory eulogium upon Mahomet 
and all his doctrines. This, as a pleasant extravagance, 
had amused all present. Some hours after, when the 
party came to separate, this philo-Mahometan missed 
his hat, upon which, whilst a general search for it was 
going on. Lamb, turning to the stranger, said — " Hat, 
sir ! — your hat ! Don't you think you came in a tur- 
ban ? " The fact that the hat ivas missing, which could 
not have been anticipated by Lamb, shows his readiness, 
and so far improves tlK) Sergeant's version of the story. 
Finally, without attempting, in this place, any elabo- 
rate analysis of Lamb's merits, (which would be no easy 
task,) one word or two may be said generally, about 
the position he is entitled to hold in our literature, and, 
comparatively, in European literature. His biographer 
thinks that Lamb had more points of resemblance to 
Professor Wilson, than to any other eminent person of 
the day. It would be presumptuous to dismiss too has- 
tily any opinion put forward by the author of " Ion ; " 
otherwise, I conless, that, for my own part, knowing 
both parties most intimately, I cannot perceive much 
closer resemblance than what must always be found be- 
tween two men of genius ; whilst the differences seem 
to me radical. To notice only two points. Professor 
Wilson's mind is, in its movement and style of feeling, 
eminently diffusive — Lamb's discontinuous and abrupt. 
Professor Wilson's humor is broad, overwhelming, riot- 
ously opulent — Lamb's is minute, delicate, and scin- 
tillating. In one feature, though otherwise as different 
as possible. Lamb resembles Sir Walter Scott — viz. in 
the dramatic character of his mind and taste. Both of 



CHARLES LAMB. 385 

them recoiled from the high ideality of such a mind as 
Milton's ; both loved the mixed standards of the world 
as it is — the dramatic standards in which good and 
evil are intermingled ; in short, that class of composition 
in which a human character is predominant. Hence, 
also, in the great national movements, and the revolu- 
tionary struggles, which, in our times, have gone on in 
so many interesting parts of the world, neither Sir 
Walter Scott nor Lamb much sympathized, nor much 
affected to sympathize, with the aspirations after some 
exaltation for human nature by means of liberty, or the 
purification of legal codes or of religious creeds. They 
were content with things as they are ; and, in the dra- 
matic interest attached to these old realities, they found 
sufficient gratification for all their sensibilities. In one 
thing, upon consideration, there does strike me, some 
resemblance between Lamb and Professor Wilson — viz. 
in the absence of affectation, and the courageous sincer- 
ity which belong to both ; and also, perhaps, as Serjeant 
Talfourd has remarked, in the comprehensiveness of 
their liberality towards all, however opposed to them- 
selves, who have any intellectual distinctions to recom 
mend them. 

But, recurring to the question I have suggested of 
Lamb's general place in literature, I shall content myself 
with indicating my own views of that point, without how- 
ever, pausing to defend them. In the literature of every 
nation, we are naturally disposed to place in the highest 
rank those who have produced some great and colossal 
work — a " Paradise Lost," a "Hamlet," a "Novum 
Organum," — which presupposes an effort of intellect, a 
comprehensive grasp, and a sustaining power, for its 
17 



386 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

original conception, corresponding in grandeur to that 
effort, different in kind, which must preside in its exe- 
cution. But, after this highest class, in which the power 
to conceive and the power to execute are upon the same 
scale of grandeur, there comes a second, in which bril- 
liant powers of execution, applied to conceptions of a very- 
inferior range, are allowed to establish a classical rank. 
Every literature possesses, besides its great national 
gallery, a cabinet of minor pieces, not less perfect in 
their polish, possibly more so. In reality, the charac- 
teristic of this class is elaborate perfection — the point 
of inferiority is not in the finishing, but in the compass 
and power of the original creation, which (however 
exquisite in its class) moves within a smaller sphere. 
To this class belong, for example, " The Rape of the 
Lock," that finished jewel of English literature ; " The 
Dunciad," (a still more exquisite gem ;) " The Vicar 
of Wakefield," (in its earlier part ;) in German, the 
" Luise " of Voss ; in French — what ? Omitting some 
others that might be named, above all others, the Fables 
of La Fontaine. He is the pet and darling, as it were, of 
ihe French literature. Now, I affirm that Charles Lamb 
occupies a corresponding station to his own literature. 
I am not speaking (it will be observed) of kinds, but of 
degrees in literary merit ; and Lamb I hold to be, as 
with respect to English literature, that which La Fon- 
taine is with respect to French. For, though there may 
be little resemblance otherwise, in this, they agree, that 
Doth were wayward and eccentric humorists ; both con- 
fined their efforts to short flights ; and both, according 
to the standards of their several countries, were, occa- 
sionally, and, in a lower key, poets. 



SIR nUMPHRY DAVY. 

Sir Humphry Davy, of all those whom I have 
just mentioned — nay, of all the eminent persons whom 
I have ever seen even by a casual glimpse — was the 
most agreeable to know on the terms of a slight ac- 
quaintance. What he might have proved upon a closer 
intimacy, I cannot say ; not having had the honor of 
any such connection with him. My acquaintance had 
never gone far enough to pass the barrier of slranger- 
ship, and the protection which lies in that conscious- 
ness, reciprocally felt ; for, if friendship and confiden- 
tial intimacy have the power to confer privileges, there 
are other privileges which they take away ; and many 
times it is better to be privileged as the " stranger " of 
a family than as its friend. Some I have known who, 
therefore, only called a man their friend, that they 
might have a license for taking liberties with him. Sir 
Humphry, I have no reason to believe, would have al- 
tered for the worse on a closer connection. But for 
myself I know him only within ceremonious bounds ; 
and I must say that nowhere, before or since, have I 
seen a man who had so felicitously caught the fascinat- 
ing tone of high-bred urbanity which distinguishes the 
best part of the British nobility. The first time of my 
seeing him was at the Courier office, in a drawing-room 
then occupied by Mr. Coleridge, and as a guest of that 
gentleman : this must have been either in 1808 or 1809. 
Sir Humphry (I forget whether then a baronet, but I 

(387) 



388 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

think not) had promised to drink tea with Mr. Cole- 
ridge, on his road to a meeting of the Royal Society ; 
before which learned body he was on that evening to 
read some paper or other of his own composition. I 
had the honor to be invited as sole " respondent " to 
the learned philosopher ; sole supporter of the antis- 
thrope in our choral performance. It sounded rather 
appalling to be engaged in a glee for three voices, with 
two performers such as these ; and I trepidated a little 
as I went up stairs, having previously understood that 
the great man was already come. The door was 
thrown open by the servant who announced me ; and I 
saw at once, in full proportions before me, the full- 
length figure of the young savant^ not, perhaps, above 
ten years older than myself, whose name already filled 
all the post-horns of Europe, and levied homage from 
Napoleon. He was a little below the middle height ; 
agreeable in his person, and amiable in the expression 
of his countenance. His dress was elaborately accu- 
rate and fashionable — no traces of soot or furnace 
there ; it might be said, also, that it was youthful and 
almost gay in its character. But what chiefly distin- 
guished him from other men, was the captivating — one 
might call it the radiant — courtesy of his manner. It 
was at once animated and chastised by good-breeding ; 
graceful, and, at the same time, gracious. 

From a person so eminent it would not have been a 
sufficient encouragement that his manner should be, in 
a passive sense, courteous. This would have expressed 
only a consciousness of what was due to himself. But 
Sir Humphry's manner was conciliatory and intention- 
ally winning. To a person as obscure as myself, it held 



MRS. SIDD0N3 AND MRS. HANNAH MORE. 389 

out the flattering expressions of a wish to recommend 
himself, an assurance of interest in your person, and a 
desire both to know and to be known. 



MRS. SIDDONS AND MRS. HANNAH MORE. 

From the Lakes, I went annually southwards — chief- 
ly to Somersetshire or to London, and more rarely to 
Edinburgh. In my Somersetshire visits, I never failed 
to see Mrs. Hannah More. My own relative's house, 
in fact, standing within one mile of Barley Wood, I sel- 
dom suffered a week to pass without calling to pay my 
respects. There was a stronger motive to this than 
simply what arose from Mrs. H. More's company, or 
even from that of her sisters, (one or two of whom 
were more entertaining because more filled with ani- 
mal spirits and less thoughtful than Mrs. Hannah ;) for 
it rarely happened that one called within the privileged 
calling hours, which, with these rural ladies, ranged be- 
tween twelve and four o'clock, but one met some per- 
son interesting by rank, station, political or literary 
eminence. 

Here, accordingly, it was, that, during one of my last 
visits to Somersetshire, either in 1813 or 1814, I met 
Mrs. Siddons, whom I had often seen upon the stage, but 
never before in private society. 

Mrs. Hannah More was too polished a woman to al- 
low of any sectarian movement being impressed upon 
the conversation ; consequently, she soon directed it to 



390 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCE Y. 

literature, upon which Mrs. Siddons was very amusing, 
from her recollections of Dr. Jolmson, whose fine-turned 
compliment to herself, (so much in the spirit of those 
unique compliments addressed to eminent people by 
Louis XIV.) had for ever planted the Doctor's memory 
in her heart. She spoke also of Garrick and of Mrs. 
Garrick ; but not, I think, with so much respect and 
affection as Mrs. Hannah More, who had, in her youthful 
days, received the most friendly attentions from both, 
though coming forward at that time in no higher char- 
acter than as the author of Percy, the most insipid 
Of tragedies. Mrs. Siddons was prevailed on to read 
passages from both Shakspeare and Milton. The dra- 
matic readings were delightful ; in fact, they were al- 
most stage rehearsals, accompanied with appropriate 
gesticulation. One was the great somnambulist scene 
in Macbeth, which was the ne plus ultra in the whole 
range of Mrs. Siddons's scenical exhibitions, and can 
never be forgotten by any man who once had the happi- 
ness to witness that immortal performance of the divine 
artist. Another, given at the request of a Dutch lady, 
residing in the neighborhood of Barley Wood, was the 
scene from King John, of the Lady Constance, beginning 
— " Gone to be married ! gone to swear a peace ! " <fec. 
The last, and truly superb for the musical intonation of 
the cadences, was that inimitable apology or pleading 
of Christian charity for Cardinal Wolsey, addressed to 
his bitterest enemy, Queen Catherine. All these, iu 
different degrees and different ways, were exquisite. 
But the readings from Milton were not to my taste. 
And, some weeks after, when, at Mrs. Hannah More's 
request, I had read to her some of Lord Byron's most 



MRS. SIDDONS AND MRS. HANNAH MORE. 391 

popular works, I got her to acknowldege, in then speak- 
ing upon the subject of reading, that perhaps the style 
of Mrs. Siddon's reading had been too much determin- 
ed to the dramatic cast of emphasis, and the pointed 
expression of character and situation which must al- 
ways belong to a speaker bearing a part in a dialogue, 
to admit of her assuming the tone of a rapt poetic 
inspiration. 

Meantime, whatever she did — whether it were in 
display of her own matchless talents, but always at the 
earnest request of the company or of her hostess — or 
whether it were in gentle acquiescent attention to the 
display made by others — or whether it were as one 
member of a general party, taking her part occasionally, 
for the amusement of the rest, and contributing to the 
general fund of social pleasure — nothing could exceed 
the amiable, kind, and unassuming deportment of Mrs. 
Siddons. She had retired from the stage,* and no 
longer regarded herself as a public character. But so 
much the stronger did she seem to think the claims of 
her friends upon anything she could do for their 
amusement. 

Meantime, amongst the many pleasurable impressions 
which Mrs. Siddon's presence never failed to make, 
there was one which was positively painful and humiliat- 
ing : it was the degradation which it inflicted upon other 



* I saw her, however, myself upon the stage twice after this meeting 
at Barley Wood ; it was at Edinburgh ; and the parts were those of 
Lady Macbeth and Lady Randolph. But she then performed only as 
an expression of kindness to her grandchildren. Professor Wilson and 
myself saw her on the occasion from the stage-box, with a delight em- 
bittered by the certainty that we saw her for the last time. 



392 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

women. One day there was a large dinner party at 
Barley Wood — Mrs. Siddons was present ; and I re- 
marked to a gentleman who sat next to me — a remark 
which he heartily confirmed — that upon rising to let 
the ladies leave us, Mrs. Siddons, by the mere necessity 
of her regal deportment dwarfed the whole party, and 
made them look ridiculous ; though Mrs. H. More, and 
others of the ladies present, were otherwise really 
women of very pleasing appearance. 

For my own part, I shall always regard my recollec- 
tions of Mrs. Siddons as those in which chiefly I have 
an advantage over the coming generation ; nay, perhaps 
over all generations ; for many centuries may revolve 
without producing such another transcendent creature. 



SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 

In the year 1814 it was that I became acquainted 
with Sir William Hamilton, the present professor of 
logic in the University of Edinburgh. I was then in 
Edinburgh for the first time, on a visit to Mrs. Wilson, 
the mother of Professor Wilson. Him, who at that 
time neither ivas a professor, nor dreamed of becoming 
one (his intention being to pursue his profession of ad- 
vocate at the Scottish bar), I had known for a little 
more than five years. Wordsworth it was, then living 
at Allan Bank in Grasmere, who had introduced me to 
John Wilson ; and ever afterwards, I was a frequent 
visitor at his beautiful place of Elleray, on Windermere, 



SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 393 

not above nine miles distant from mj own cottage in 
Grasmere. In those days, Wilson sometimes spoke to 
me of his friend Hamilton, as of one specially distin- 
guished by manliness and elevation of character, and 
occasionally gazed at as a monster of eruditon. Indeed, 
the extent of his reading was said to be portentous — 
in fact, frightful ; and, to some extent, even suspicious ; 
so that certain ladies thought him " no canny ; " for, if 
arithmetic could demonstrate that all the days of his 
life, ground down and pulverized into " wee wee " 
globules of five or eight minutes each, and strung upon 
threads, would not furnish a rosary anything like cor- 
responding, in its separate beads or counters, to the 
books he was known to have studied and familiarly used, 
tlien it became clear that he must have had extra aid, 
and, in some way or other, must have read by proxy. 

One morning I was sitting alone after breakfast, wher; 
Wilson suddenly walked in with his friend Hamilton. 
So exquisitely free was Sir William from all ostentation 
of learning, that unless the accidents of conversation 
made a natural opening for display, such as it would 
have been affectation to evade, you might have failed 
altogether to suspect that an extraordinary scholar was 
present. On this first interview with him, I saw noth- 
ing to challenge any special attention beyond an unusual 
expression of kindness and cordiality in his abord. 
There was also an air of dignity and massy self-depend- 
ence diffused over his deportment, too calm and unaffect- 
ed to leave a doubt that it exhaled spontaneously from 
its nature, yet too unassuming to mortify the pretensions 
of others. Men of genius I had seen before, and men 
distinguished for their attainments, who shocked every- 
17* 



394 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

body, and upon me in particular, nervously susceptible, 
inflicted with horror as well as distress, by striving rest- 
lessly and almost angrily for the chief share in conver- 
sation. Some I had known, who possessed themselves 
in effect pretty nearly of the whole, without being dis- 
tinctly aware of what they were about ; and one auto- 
cratic gentleman there was among them, perfectly aware 
of what he was about, who (in the phrase of politicians) 
" went for " the whole from the very first ; and, if things 
had come to that pass that he might not have all, gave 
notice, with vengeance blazing in his eyes, that he 
would have none. He was not to be done at his time 
of life by frivolous offers of a compromise that might 
have secured him seventy-five per cent. No, no ; all 
without discount — that was his ultimatum. In Sir 
William Hamilton, on the other hand, was an apparent 
carelessness whether he took any conspicuous share or 
none at all in the conversation. It is possible that, as 
the representative of an ancient family he may secretly 
have felt his position in life ; far less, however, in the 
sense of its advantages than of its obligations and re- 
straints. And in general, my conclusion was, that at 
that time I had rarely seen a person who manifested 
less of self-esteem, under any of the forms by which 
ordinarily it reveals itself — whether of pride, or vanity, 
or full-blown arrogance, or heart-chilling reserve. 

But, meantime, what was the peculiar and differential 
nature of Sir William's pursuits, which had won for 
him already so much distinction, and against him so 
much expectation ? for really a man's own merit often 
comes to act against him with deadliest hostility, when, 
by inflaming his reputation, it has also the power of too 



SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 395 

much inflaming the standard by which he will be tried. 
Sir William's reputation was as yet of that interesting 
(because somewhat mysterious) kind, which has not yet 
crept into newspapers, but is moving, even locally, only 
through wliispers. And in these whispers, forty years 
ago, there was nothing like the same principle of con- 
tagion that now exists. The cause of this lies partly in 
railways, which are not only swift in themselves, but the 
causes of swiftness in everything else ; so that very 
soon, I am convinced, out of pure, blind sympathy with 
railway trains, men will begin to trot through the 
streets ; and in the next generation, unconsciously, they 
will take to cantering. We may see a proof of this in 
the increased vitality of slang. To my knowledge, it 
took eighteen years to transplant from Germany to this 
country the Greek word my thus : but, in more recent 
days, the absurd abuse of the word myth^ for a fib, has 
not cost three years, when helped forward by female lips. 
And as the whispers were then far below our existing 
whispers in velocity of circulation, they were no better 
as regarded accuracy. The first thing I heard about 
Sir William Hamilton was, that he might be regarded 
as the modern Magliabecchi, or even as a better Maglia- 
becchi, if better there could be. Now you are aware, 
my youthful reader, or (if not) you soon shall be aware, 
that the said M. (whose long name I don't intend to 
spell over again) was that librarian, a hundred and 
fifty years ago, to some Grand Duke of Tuscany, who, 
by dint of trotting and cantering over all pages of all 
books, could not only repeat verbatim et literatum any 
possible paragraph from any conceivable book, and, 
letting down his bucket into the dark ages, could fetch 



396 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

up for you any amount of rubbish that you might call 
for, but could even tell you on which side, dexter or 
sinister, starboard or larboard, the particular page might 
stand, in which he had been angling. Well ; I admire 
Indian jugglers ; I look with pleasure on ropedancers, 
whether dancing the slack or the tight rope ; and I, for 
one, would not have grudged a subscription of five shil- 
lings towards inducing Mag. to go through his tricks. 
But, when all was over, I must still have asked. Now, 
Mag. with submission, what may be the use of all that ? 

Mag.'s talent might seem admirable in the way that 
magic is admirable. Any intellectual gift whatever, 
such as Jedediah Buxton's gift of demoniac arithmetic, 
though not only useless, but perhaps even a curse to its 
possessor, is worth the tribute of one moment's ad- 
miration ; it is entitled to a Bravo ! though one would 
scruple to give it an Ancora! On the other hand, as 
to Mag.'s mode of conjuring, I am now satisfied that it 
was no talent at all, as the world has hitherto imagined, 
but simply a cutaneous disease. The man ought to have 
been cupped and leeched, or treated with tonics. 

They knew little of Sir Wiliam Hamilton, who 
fancied that his enormous reading tended to any result 
so barren as this. But other whisperers there were, 
who would have persuaded me that Sir William was 
simply a great linguist. Since the time when I first 
came to know him, Europe has had several monsters of 
that class, and, amongst others, Cardinal Mezzofante. 
Perhaps the Cardinal was, on the whole, the greatest of 
his order. He knew, I believe (so as to speak familiar- 
ly), thirty-four languages ; whereas a Scandinavian 
clergyman (Swedish or Norse), who has died since the 



SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 897 

cardinal, and was reputed to have mastered fifty-six, 
probably only read them. But what ultimate value at- 
tached to this hyperbolical acquisition ? If one wrote 
an epitaph for his eminence, one might be tempted into 
saying, " Here lies a man that, in the act of dying, com- 
mitted a robbery, absconding from his poor fellow- 
creatures with a valuable polyglot dictionary." As- 
suredly, any man who puts his treasures into a form 
which must perish in company with himself, is no pro- 
found benefactor to his species. Not thus did Sir Wil- 
liam proceed, as I soon learned after I made his ac- 
quaintance ; and the results of his reading are now 
sown and rooted at Paris, not less than at Berlin ; are 
blossoming on the Rhine ; and are bearing fruit on the 
Danube. 



DETACHED GEMS. 



DETACHED GEMS. 

Many people are of opinion that the Romans only 
understood what the capabilities of dinner were. It is 
certain that they were the first great people that discov- 
ered the true secret and meaning of dinner, the great 
office which it fulfils, and which we in England are now 
so generally acting on. Barbarous nations — and none 
were, in that respect, more barbarous than our own an- 
cestors — made this capital blunder: the brutes, if you 
asked them what was the use of dinner, what it was 
meant for, stared at you, and replied — as a horse 
would reply, if you put the same question about his 
provender — that it was to give him strength for finish- 
ing his work ! Therefore, if you point your telescope 
back to antiquity about twelve or one o'clock in the 
daytime, you will descry our most worthy ancestors all 
eating for their very lives, eating as dogs eat — viz., in 
bodily fear that some other dog will come and take their 
dinner away. What swelling of the veins in the tem- 
ples (see Boswell's natural history of Dr. Johnson at 
dinner) ! what intense and rapid deglutition ! what 
odious clatter of knives and plates ! what silence of 
the human voice ! what gravity ! what fury in the libidi- 
nous eyes with which they contemplate the dishes ! 
Positively it was an indecent spectacle to see Dr. John- 
son at dinner. But, above all, what maniacal haste 
and hurry, as if the fiend were waiting with red-hot 
pincers to lay hold of the hindermost ! 
401 



402 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

Oh, reader, do you recognize in this abominable pic- 
ture your respected ancestors and ours ? Excuse me 
for saying " What monsters ! " I have a right to call 
my own ancestors monsters ; and, if so, I must have the 
same right over yours. For Southey has shown plain- 
ly in the " Doctor," that every man having four grand- 
parents in the second stage of ascent, consequently 
(since each of those four will have had four grandpa- 
rents) sixteen in the third stage, consequently sixty- 
four in the fourth, consequently two hundred and fifty- 
six in the fifth, and so on, it follows that, long before you 
get to the Conquest, every man and women then living 
in England will be wanted to make up the sum of my 
separate ancestors ; consequently you must take your 
ancestors out of the very same fund, or (if you are too 
proud for that) you must go without ancestors. So 
that, your ancestors being clearly mine, I have a right 
in law to call the whole " kit " of them monsters. Quod 
erat demonstrandum. Really and upon my honor, it 
makes one, for the moment, ashamed of one's descent ; 
one w^ould wish to disinherit one's-self backwards, and 
(as Sheridan says in the " Rivals ") to " cut the con- 
nection." 

In a celebrated satire ( The Pursuits of Literature,) 
much read in my youth, and which I myself read about 
twenty-five years ago, I remember one counsel — there 
addressed to young men, but in fact, of universal ap- 
plication. "I call upon them," said the author, to 
" dare to be ignorant of many things : " a wise counsel, 
and justly expressed ; for it requires much courage to 
forsake popular paths of knowledge, merely upon a 



DETACHED GEMS. 403 

conviction that they are not favorable to the ultimate 
ends of knowledge. 

How feeble a conception must that man have of the 
infinity which lurks in a human spirit, who can per- 
suade himself that its total capacities of life are ex- 
haustible by the few gross ads incident to social rela- 
tions or open to human valuation ! An act, which may 
be necessarily limited and without opening for variety, 
may involve a large variety of motives — motives again, 
meaning grounds of action that are distinctly recog- 
nized for such, may (numerically speaking) amount to 
nothing at all when compared with the absolutely infinite 
influxes of feeling or combination of feeling that vary 
the thoughts of man ; and the true internal acts of 
moral man are his thoughts, his yearnings, his aspira- 
tions, his sympathies, his repulsions of heart. Tliis is 
the life of man as it is appreciable by heavenly eyes. 
The scale of an alphabet, how narrow is that ! Four or 
six and twenty letters, and all is finished. Syllables 
range through a wider compass. Words are yet more 
than syllables. But what are words to thoughts ? 
Every word has a thought corresponding to it, so that 
not by so much as one solitary counter can the words 
outrun the thoughts. But every thought has not a word 
corresponding to it ; so that the thoughts may outrun 
the words by many a thousand counters. In a de- 
veloped nature they do so. But what are the thoughts 
when set against the modifications of thoughts by feel- 
ings, hidden even from him that feels them, or against 
the inter-combinations of such modifications with others 
— complex with complex, decomplex with decomplex ■ — 



404 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

these can be unravelled by no human eye ! This is 
the infinite music that God only can read upon the vast 
harp of the human heart. Some have fancied that 
musical combinations might be exhausted. A new Mo- 
zart might be impossible. All that he could do might 
already have been done. Music laughs at that, as the 
sea laughs at palsy for its billows, as the morning laughs 
at old age and wrinkles for itself. But a harp, though 
a world in itself, is but a narrow world by comparison 
with the world of a human heart. 

Now these thoughts, tinctured subtly with the per- 
fume and coloring of human affections, make up the 
sum of what merits xai' ikoxrjv the name of life ; and 
these in a vast proportion depend for their possibilities 
of truth upon the degree of approach which the thinker 
makes to the appropriation of a pure faith. A man is 
thinking all day long, and putting thoughts into words ; 
he is acting comparatively seldom. But are any man's 
thoughts brought into conformity with the openings to 
truth that a faith like the Christian's faith suggests ? 
Far from it. Probably there never was one thought, 
from the foundation of the earth, that has passed through 
the mind of man, which did not offer some blemish, 
some sorrowful shadow of pollution, when it came up 
for review before a heavenly tribunal ; that is, suppos- 
ing it a thought entangled at all with human interests oi 
human passions. But it is the key in which the thoughts 
move, that determines the stage of moral advancement. 

Many are the matches wliich I have had against time 
in my time and in his time [i. e. in Time's time.] And 
all such matches, writing or riding, are memorably un- 



DETACHED GEMS. 405 

fair. Time, the meagre shadow, carries no weight at 
all, so what parity can there be in any contest with 
him ? What does he know of anxiety, or liver com- 
plaint, or income tax, or of the vexations connected 
with the correcting of proofs for the press ? Although, 
by the way, he does take upon himself, with his villain- 
ous scrawl, to correct all the fair proofs of nature. He 
sows canker into the heart of rosebuds, and writes 
wrinkles (which are his odious attempts at pothooks) 
in the loveliest of female faces. No type so fair, but 
he fancies, in his miserable conceit, that he can improve 
it ; no stereotope so fixed, but he will alter it ; and, 
having spoiled one generation after another he still per- 
sists in believing himself the universal amender and the 
ally of progress. Ah ! that one might, if it were but 
for one day in a century, be indulged with the sight of 
Time forced into a personal incarnation, so as be capa- 
ble of personal insult — a cudgelling, for instance, or a 
ducking in a horse-pond. Or, again, that once in a 
century, were it but for a single summer's day, his cor- 
rected proofs might be liable to supersession by revises, 
such as I would furnish, down the margin of which 
should run one perpetual iteration of stet., slet.;^^ 
everything that the hoary scoundrel had deleted, rose- 
buds or female bloom, beauty or power, grandeur or 
grace, being solemnly reinstated, and having the privi- 
lege of one day's secular resurrection, like the Arabian 
phoenix, or any other memento of power in things earth- 
ly and in sublunary births, to mock and to defy the 
Bcythe of this crowned thief ! 

More truly, and more philosophically, it may be said 



406 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

that there is nothing old under the sun, no absolute 
repetition. It is the well known doctrine of Leibnitz, 
that amongst the familiar objects of our daily experience, 
there is no perfect identity. All in external nature 
proceeds by endless variety. Infinite change, illimitable 
novelty, inexhaustible diflference, these are the founda- 
tions upon which nature builds and ratifies her purpose 
of individuality — so indispensable, amongst a thousand 
other great uses, to the very elements of social distinc- 
tions and social rights. But for the endless circumstances 
of difi'erence which characterize external objects, the 
rights of property, for instance, would have stood upon 
no certain basis, nor admitted of any general or com- 
prehensive guarantee. 

As with external objects, so with human actions ; 
amidst their infinite approximations and affinities, they 
are separated by circumstances of never-ending diversi- 
ty. History may furnish her striking correspondences, 
Biography her splendid parallels, Rome may in certain 
cases appear but the mirror of Athens, England of 
Rome, — and yet, after all, no character can be cited, 
no great transaction, no revolution of " high-viced 
cities," no catastrophe of nations, which, in the midst 
of its resemblances to distant correspondences in other 
ages, does not include features of abundant distinction 
and individualizing characteristics, so many and so im- 
portant, as to yield its own peculiar matter for philo- 
sophical meditation and its own separate moral. 

A JEST often ascribed to Yoltaire, and of late point- 
edly reclaimed for him by Lord Brougham, as being 
one that he (Lord B.) could swear to for his, so char- 



DETACHED GEMS. 407 

acteristic seemed the impression of Yoltaire's mind upon 
the tournure of the scarcasm, unhappily for this wasto 
of sagacity, may be found recorded by Fabricius in tho 
Bibliotheca Grceca, as the jest of a Greek who has 
been dead for about seventeen centuries. The man 
certainly did utter the jest, and seventeen hundred and 
fifty years ago ; but who it was that he stole it from is 
another question. To all appearance, and according to 
Lord Brougham's opinion, the party robbed must have 
been M. de Voltaire. I notice the case, however, of 
the Greek thefts and frauds committed upon so many 
of our excellent wits belonging to the eighteenth and 
nineteenth centuries chiefly with a view to M. de Tal- 
leyrand — that rather middling bishop, but very emi- 
nent knave. He also has been extensively robbed by 
the Greeks of the second and third centuries. How 
else can you account for so many of his sayings being 
found amongst their pages ? — a thing you may ascer- 
tain in a moment, at any police office, by having the 
Greeks searched ; for surely you would never think of 
searching a bishop. Most of the Talleyrand jewels will 
be found concealed amongst the goods of these unprin- 
cipled Greeks. But one, and the most famous in the 
whole jewel case, sorry am I to confess, was nearly 
stolen iTom the bishop, not by any Greek, but by an 
ELglish writer, — viz.. Goldsmith, — who must have 
been dying about the time that his excellency the diplo- 
matist had the goodness to be born. That famous mot 
about language, as a gift made to man for the purpose 
of concealing his thoughts, is lurking in Goldsmith's 
Essays. Think of that! Already, in his innocent 
childhood, whilst the bishop was in petticoats, and al- 



408 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

most before he had begun to curse and to swear plainly 
in French, an Irish vagabond had attempted to swindle 
him out of that famous witticism which has since been 
as good as a life annuity to the venerable knave's lite- 
rary fame. 

All novels whatever, the best equally with the worst, 
have faded almost with the generation that produced 
them. This is a curse written as a superscription above 
the whole class. The modes of combining characters, 
the particular objects selected for sym.pathy, the diction, 
and often the manners, hold up an imperfect mirror to 
any generation that is not their own. And the reader 
of novels belonging to an obsolete era, whilst acknowl- 
edging the skill of the groupings, or the beauty of the 
situations, misses the echo to that particular revelation 
of human nature which has met him in the social aspects 
of his own day ; or too often he is perplexed by an ex- 
pression which, having dropped into a lower use, disturbs 
the unity of the impression, or is revolted by a coarse 
sentiment, which increasing refinement has made unsuit- 
able to the sex or to the rank of the character. 

A MAN of original genius, shown to us as revolving 
through the leisurely stages of a biographical memoir, 
lays open, to readers prepared for sympathy, two sepa- 
rate theatres of interest ; one in his personal career : 
the other in his works and his intellectual development. 
Both unfold together ; and each borrows a secondary 
interest from the other : the life from the recollection 
of the works — the works from the joy and sorrow of 
the life. There have, indeed, been authors whose great 



DETACHED GEMS. 409 

creations, severely preconceived in a region of thought 
transcendent to all impulses of earth, would have been 
pretty nearly what they are under any possible changes 
in the dramatic arrangement of their lives. Happy or 
not happy — gay or sad — these authors would equally 
have fulfilled a mission too solemn and too stern in its 
obligations to suffer any warping from chance, or to 
bend before the accidents of life, whether dressed in 
sunshine or in wintiy gloom. But generally this is other- 
wise. Children of Paradise, like the Miltons of our 
planet, have the privilege of stars — to " dwell apart." 
But the children of flesh, whose pulses beat too sympa- 
thetically with the agitations of mother-earth, cannot 
sequester themselves in that way. They walk in no such 
altitudes, but at elevations easily reached by ground- 
winds of humble calamity. And from that cup of sor- 
row, which upon all lips is pressed in some proportion, 
they must submit, by the very tenure on which they 
hold their gifts, to drink, if not more profoundly than 
others, yet always with more bitterness. 

To profess any one intelligible art or accomplish- 
ment, and in this one to have obtained an acknowledg- 
ed or reputed pre-eminence, is a far better passport into 
privileged society than to have the largest intellectual 
pretensions of a less determinate class. The very nar- 
rowness of a man's claims, by making them definite and 
appreciable, is an advantage. Not merely a leader in a 
branch of art, which presupposes a high sense of beauty, 
a cultivated taste, and other gifts properly intellectual, 
but even in some art presuming little beyond manual 
dexterity, is sure of his election into the exclusive 
18 



410 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

circles. Not merely a painter, therefore, but a fiddler, 
provided only ho be the first of his order — nay, I 
doubt not, a " chin-chopper " or Jews'-harp player, if 
only he happen to exceed all other chin-choppers or 
Jew-harpists — will find himself a privileged man in 
comparison with the philosopher, or the very largest 
and amplest intellect that ever nature endowed or edu- 
cation expanded. The advantage lies in doing a thing 
which has a name, an assignable name ; and the narrower 
is the art, the more appreciable are the degrees of merit 
in that art. 

If the reader has ever witnessed a wife, daughter, or 
sister, in a fainting fit, he may chaiice to have observed 
that the most affecting moment in such a spectacle, is 
that in which a sigh and a stirring announce the re- 
commencement of suspended life. Or, if the reader has 
ever been present in a vast metropolis, on the day when 
some great national idol was carried in funeral pomp 
to his grave, and chancing to walk near the course 
through which it passed, has felt powerfully, in the 
silence and desertion of the streets, and in the stagna- 
tion of ordinary business, the deep interest which at 
that moment was possessing the heart of man, — if all 
at once he should hear the death-like stillness broken 
up by the sound of wheels rattling away from the scene, 
and making known that the transitory vision was dis- 
solved, he will be aware that at no moment was his 
sense of the complete suspension and pause in ordinary 
human concerns so full and affecting, as at that moment 
when the suspension ceases, and the goings-on of human 
life are suddenly resumed. All action in any direction 



DETACHED GEMS. 411 

is best expounded, measured, and made apprehensible, 
by reaction. 

It had happened that amongst our nursery collection 
of books was the Bible illustrated with many pictures. 
And in long dark evenings, as my three sisters with my- 
self sate by the firelight round the guard of our nur- 
sery, no book was so much in request amongst us. It 
ruled us and swayed us as mysteriously as music. One 
young nurse, whom we all loved, before any candle was 
lighted, would often strain her eye to read it for us ; 
and, sometimes, according to her simple powers, would 
endeavor to explain what we found obscure. We, the 
children, were all constitutionally touched with pen- 
si veness ; the fitful gloom and sudden lambencies of the 
room by firelight suited our evening state of feelings ; 
and they suited, also, the divine revelations of power 
and mysterious beauty which awed us. Above all, \hQ 
story of a just man — man and yet 7iot man, real above 
all things, and yet shadowy above all things, who had 
suffered the passion of death in Palestine — slept upon 
our minds like early dawn upon the waters. 

There is no truth in Pope's satiric sketches of women 
— not even colorable truth; but, if there were, how 
frivolous, how hollow, to erect into solemn monumental 
protestations against the whole female sex what, if ex- 
amined, turn out to be pure casual eccentricities, or 
else personal idiosyncrasies, or else foibles shockingly 
caricatured, but above all, to be such foibles as could 
not have connected themselves with sincere feelings of 
indignation in any rational mind ! 



412 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCEY. 

Figure to yourself an energetic tourist, who protests 
everywhere that he comes only to see the lakes. He 
has no business whatever ; he is is not searching for any 
recreant indorser of a bill, but simply in search of the 
picturesque. Yet this man adjures every landlord, 
*' by the virtue of his oath," to tell him, and, as he 
hopes for peace in this world, to tell him truly, which 
is the nearest road to Keswick. Next, he applies to 
the postillions, — the Westmoreland postillions always 
fly down hills at full stretch without locking, — but, 
nevertheless, in the full career of their fiery race, our 
picturesque man lets down the glasses, pulls up four 
horses and two postillions, at the risk of six necks and 
twenty legs, adjuring them to reveal whether they are 
taking tlie shortest road. Finally, he descries my un- 
worthy self upon the road ; and, instantly stopping his 
flying equipage, he demands of me (as one whom he be- 
lieves to be a scholar and a man of honor) whether 
there is not, in the possibility of things, a shorter cut 
to Keswick. Now^, the answer which rises to the lips 
of landlord, two postillions, and myself, is this : "Most 
excellent stranger, as you come to the lakes simply to 
see their loveliness, might it not be as well to ask after 
the most beautiful road, rather than the shortest? Be- 
cause, if abstract shortness, if to brevity, is your object, 
then the shortest of all possible tours would seem, with 
submission, never to have left London." 

Too constantly, when reviewing his own efi'orts for 
improvement, a man has reason to say (indignantly, as 
one injured by others ; penitentially, as contributing to 
this injury himself,) " Much of my studies have been 



DETACHED GEMS. 413 

thrown away ; many books which were useless, or worse 
than useless, I have read ; many books which ought to 
have been read, I have left unread ; such is the sad neces- 
sity under the absence of all preconceived plan ; and 
the proper road is first ascertained when the journey is 
drawing to its close." In a wilderness so vast as that 
of books, to go astray often and widely is pardonable, 
because it is inevitable ; and in proportion as the errors 
on this primary field of study have been great, it is im- 
portant to have reaped some compensatory benefits on 
the secondary field of conversation. Books teach by 
one machinery, conversation by another; and, if these 
resources were trained into correspondence to their own 
separate ideals, they might become reciprocally the 
complements of each other. 

The idea involved in what we call manners is a very 
complex one ; and in some of its elements, as we may 
have occasion to show further on, it represents qualities 
of character (as also of temperament) that are perfect- 
ly neutral as regards the social expression of manners. 
This social expression, which is the chief thing that 
men think of when describing manners as good or bad, 
lies in two capital features : first of all, in respect to 
others ; secondly, in self-respect. Now, the English fail 
too often in the first, the French in the second. There 
is the balance. The French reason to have us as re- 
gards the first ; we them as regards the second. 

The term " respect for others " may seem too strong 
for the case. Respect^ in its graver expressions, may 
have no opening for itself in casual intercourse with 
strangers. But simple decency of appearance, and 



414 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

decorum of manner, warrant that limited mode of re- 
spect which expresses itself by courtesy and affability. 
You listen to the stranger with complaisance ; you 
answer him with cheerfulness. So much of attention 
might be justified in the most aristocratic country by a 
decent exterior, by a demeanor not brutal, and by a 
style of conversation not absolutely repulsive. Here it 
is, and in all cases where the relation between strangers 
rests upon the simple footing of their common humanity, 
that the Frenchman has so great an advantage over the 
Englishman. Every Frenchman has been trained from 
his infancy to recognize in all human beings an inde- 
feasible claim upon his civility. To listen without 
visible impatience upon being asked by a stranger for 
information, to answer without abruptness or marked 
expression of hurry, he considers a mere debt to the 
universal rights of human nature ; and to refuse the pay- 
ment of a debt so easily settled he would regard as a 
dishonor to himself. The Englishman, on the other 
hand, in the same circumstances, is too often morose 
and churlish ; he answers fretfully, hurriedly, and 
briefly, as to one who is interrupting him unseasonably, 
or even robbing him of his time ; and at any rate it is 
rare that he answers as if he had a pleasure in giving 
the information asked. This tone of harshness and in- 
civility it is that constantly deters people of quick sen- 
sibility from addressing themselves at random, in any 
case of difficulty, to the street-passengers in London. 
Often have we observed timid or nervous people draw- 
ing up into a corner, and anxiously reviewing the stream 
of passing faces, in order to select one that might prom- 
ise patience enough and kindness for enduring the in- 



DETACHED GEMS. 415 

terruption. This repulsive aspect of British manners 
wears even an exaggerated shape in Scotland. London 
is not half so uncivilized in this respect as some of our 
Lowland Scottish cities. Ask a question of ten suc- 
cessive passengers, and nine of the answers will give 
you reason to wish that you had held your tongue. 
Even sexuaJ gallantry avails not always to prompt 
courtesy. A handsome young lady from the northern 
Highlands of Scotland, used to the courtesy of her 
Celtic countrymen (for the Scotch Highlanders have no 
resemblance in this point to the Lowland Scotch), told 
us, that on her first visit southwards, happening to in- 
quire her way of a working-man, instead of any direc- 
tion whatever, she received a lecture for her presump- 
tion in supposing that " folk " had nothing else to do 
but to answer idle people's questions. This was her 
first application. Her second was less mortifying, but 
equally unprofitable. The man in that second case ut- 
tered no word at all, civil or uncivil ; but with a semi- 
circular wave backwards of his right arm, jerked his 
right thumb over his right shoulder, after which he re- 
peated the same manoeuvre with his left arm, left thumb, 
and left shoulder, — leaving the young Inverness-shire 
lady utterly mystified by his hieroglyphics, which to 
this hour she has not solved, still thankful that he had 
forborne to lecture her. 

At first sight, then, it may be easily imagined how 
fascinating* is the aspect of a society moulded by 



* A Scotchman, who published an account of his tour to Paris some 
ten or twelve years ago, furnishes a memorable illustration of the pro- 
found impression made on him by a sudden transition from his native 



416 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCET. 

French courtesy, coming in direct succession to that 
harsher form which society wears in the streets of this 
island. And yet even this French courtesy has been 
the object of suspicion in reference to its real origin. 
Mr. Scott, of Aberdeen, a celebrated man in his day, 
was assured during one of his French tours, and not by 
any envious foreigner, but by a discerning Frenchman, 
that the true ground of French affability was, not any 
superior kindness of heart disposable for petty occasions^ 
but the national love of talking. A French woman 
comes out of her road, or leaves her shop in order to 
finish her instructions as to your proper route, so that 
mistake shall be impossible. She does this with an em- 
pressment that seems truly amiable, because apparently 
altogether disinterested. " By no means," said her 
cynical countryman to Mr. Scott, " not at all disinter- 
ested. What she seeks to gratify is far less any temper 
of general kindliness than of the furious passion for 
hearing herself talk. Garrulity is what you gentleman 
from England have mistaken for diffusive courtesy." 
There is so far a foundation for this caustic remark, that 
undoubtedly the French are the most garrulous people 
upon earth. Look into the novels of Eugene Sue and 
of Dumas, which reflect pretty accurately the external 

country to France. He professes himself a rigid Presbyterian, and 
everywhere shows a bigoted hatred of Popery, which at times expresses 
itself most indecorously ; yet such was his astonishment at the general 
courtesy amongst the French, and such his sense of the public peace 
produced by this courtesy, combined with general sobriety, that he seri- 
ously propounds the question, — whether even the sacrifice of Protestant 
purity, and the adoption of Popery, would not be a cheap price to pay, 
if by such changes it were-possible to purchase these French advantages 
of quiet and refinement. 



DETACHED GEMS. 417 

features of Parisian society, and you will perceive how 
indispensable to the daily comfort of the general popu- 
lation is copious talking, and unlimited indulgence of 
petty personal curiosity. These habits naturally support 
and strengthen the auxiliary habit of cheerful polite- 
ness. To tempt others into the spirit of communicative- 
ness, it is indispensable to open their hearts by courteous 
and genial treatment. But, allowing for this undoubted 
national infirmity, — namely, the intense predisposition 
to gossiping and commerage^ — it still remains undeni- 
able that the French, with less of a profound or im- 
passioned benignity than some of their neighbors, have 
more by a great deal of that light-hearted, surface good 
nature, which applies itself to trivial and uncostly ser- 
vices. 

If life could throw open its long suites of chambers 
to our eyes from some station beforehand^ — if, from 
some secret stand, we could look by anticipation along 
its vast corridors, and aside into the recesses opening 
upon them from either hand, — halls of tragedy or 
chambers of retribution, simply in that small wing and 
no more of the great caravanserai which we ourselves 
shall haunt, — simply in that narrow tract of time, and 
no more, where we ourselves shall range, and confining 
our gaze to those, and no others, for whom personally 
we shall be interested, — what a recoil we suffer of hor- 
ror in our estimate of life ! What if those sudden car 
tastrophes, or those inexpiable afflictions, which have 
already descended upon the people within my own 
knowledge, and almost below my own eyes, all of them 
now gone past, and some long past, had been thrown 
18* 



418 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

open before me as a secret exhibition when first I and 
they stood within the vestibule of morning hopes, — 
when the calamities themselves had hardly begun to 
gather in their elements of possibility, and when some 
of the parties to them were as yet no more than infants! 

Yery greviously I suspect myself of plagiarism from 
Moliere. In one of his plays, Mons. Y. says to Mons. 
X., " You understand Greek, I believe ? " To which 
Mons. X. replies, " 0, yes, I understand Greek perfect- 
ly. But have the goodness, my dear friend, to talk to 
me as if by chance 1 did not understand Greek." 

Lastly came that magnificent liturgical service which 
the English church performs at the side of the grave ; 
for this church does not forsake her dead so long as 
they continue in the upper air, but waits for her last 
" sweet and solemn farewell " at the side of the grave. 
There is exposed once again, and for the last time, the 
coffin. All eyes survey the record of name, of sex, of 
age, and the day of departure from earth — records 
how shadowy ! and dropped into darkness as if mes- 
sages addressed to worms. Almost at the very last 
comes the symbolic ritual, tearing and shattering the 
heart with volleying discharges, peal after peal, from 
the final artillery of woe. The coffin is lowered into 
its home ; it has disappeared from all eyes but those 
that look down into the abyss of the grave. The sac- 
ristan stands ready, with his shovel of earth and stones. 
The priest's voice is heard once more, — earth to earth, 
— and immediately the dread rattle ascends from the 
lid of the coffin ; ashes to ashes — and again the killing 



DETACHED GEMS. 419 

soniid is heard ; dust to dust — and the farewell volley 
announces that the grave, the coffin, the face are sealed 
up forever and ever. 

Grief I thou art classed amongst the depressing pas- 
sions. And true it is that thou humblest to the dust, 
but also thou exaltest to the clouds. Thou shakest as 
with ague, but also thou steadiest like frost. Thou 
sickenest the heart, but also thou healest its infirmities. 

Interesting it is to observe how certainly all deep feel- 
ings agree in this, that they seek for solitude, and are 
nursed by solitude. Deep grief, deep love, how natural- 
ly do these ally themselves with religious feeling ; and 
all three — love, grief, religion — are haunters of soli- 
tary places. Love, grief, the passion of reverie, or the 
mystery of devotion, — what were these, without soli- 
tude ? 

By what right does a man display to another, in his 
very look of alienation and repulsion at his first intro- 
duction, that he dislikes him, or that he is doubtful 
whether he shall like him ? Yet this is the too general 
movement of British sincerity. The play of feelings, 
the very flux and reflux of contending emotions, passes 
too nakedly in the very act and process of introduction, 
under the eyes of the party interested. Frankness is 
good, honesty is good ; but not a frankness, not an 
honesty which counteracts the very purposes of social 
meetings — for, unless he comes with the purpose of 
being pleased, why does a man come at all into meet- 
ings, not of business or necessity, but of relaxation and 
social pleasure ? 



420 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

I HAVE sometimes had occasion to remark, as a notice* 
able phenomenon of our present times that the order of 
ladies called bluestockings^ by way of reproach, has 
become totally extinct amongst us, except only here and 
there with superannuated dingers to obsolete remem- 
brances. The reason of this change is interesting ; and 
I do not scruple to call it honorable to our intellectual 
progress. In the last (but still more in the penultimate) 
generation, any tincture of literature, of liberal curiosi- 
ty about science, or of ennobling interest in books, 
carried with it an air of something unsexual, mannish, 
and (as it was treated by the sycophantish satirists that 
for ever humor the prevailing folly) of something ludi- 
crous. This mode of treatment was possible so long as 
the literary class of ladies formed a feeble minority. 
But now, when two vast peoples, English and American, 
counting between them forty-nine millions, when the 
leaders of transcendent civilization (to say nothing of 
Germany and France) behold their entire educated 
class, male and female alike, calling out, not for Panem 
et circenses, (Give us this day our daily bread and our 
games of the circus), but for Panem et literas, (Give 
us this day our daily bread and literature), the univer- 
sality of the call has swept away the very name of 
bluestocking ; the very possibility of the ridicule has 
been undermined by stern realities ; and the verbal ex- 
pression of the reproach is fast becoming, not simply 
obsolete, but even unintelligible to our juniors. By the 
way, the origin of this term bluestocking has never been 
satisfactorily accounted for, unless the reader should in- 
cline to think niT/ account satisfactory. I incline to that 
opinion myself. Dr. Bisset (in his Life of Burke) traces 



DETACHED GEMS. 421 

it idly to a sobriquet imposed by Mrs. Montagu, and 
the literary ladies of her circle, upon a certain obscure 
Dr. Stillingfleet, who was the sole masculine assistant 
at their literary sittings in Portman Square, and chose, 
upon some inexplicable craze, to wear blue stockings. 
The translation, however, of this name from the doctor's 
legs to the ladies' legs is still unsolved. That great 
hiatus needs filling up. I, therefore, whether errone- 
ously or not, in reviewing a German historical work of 
some pretensions, where this problem emerges, rejected 
the Portman Square doctor altogether, and traced the 
term to an old Oxford statute — one of the many which 
meddle with dress, and which charges it as a point of 
conscience upon loyal scholastic students that they shall 
wear cerulean socks. Such socks, therefore, indicated 
scholasticism : worn by females, they would indicate a 
self-dedication to what for them would be regarded as 
pedantic studies. But, says an objector, no rational 
female ivoidd wear cerulean socks. Perhaps not, female 
taste being too good. But as such socks would symbol- 
ize such a profession of pedantry, so, inversely, any 
profession of pedantry, by whatever signs expressed, 
would be symbolized reproachfully by the imputation of 
wearing cerulean socks. It classed a woman, in effect, 
as a scholastic pedant. Now, however, when the vast 
diffusion of literature as a sort of daily bread has made 
all ridicule of female literary culture not less ridiculous 
than would be the attempt to ridicule that same daily 
bread, the whole phenomenon, thing and word, sub- 
stance and shadow, is melting away from amongst us. 

1 DO not wish, in paying my homage to the other sex, 



422 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

and in glorifying its possible power over ours, to be con- 
founded with those thoughtless and trivial rhetoricians 
who flatter woman with a false lip-worship ; and, like 
Lord Byron's buccaneers, hold out to them a picture of 
their own empire, built only upon sensual or upon shad- 
owy excellences. We find continually a false enthusi- 
asm, a mere bacchanalian inebriation, on behalf of wo- 
man, put forth by modern verse writers, expressly at the 
expense of the other sex, as though woman could be of 
porcelain, whilst man was of common earthern ware. 
Even the testimonies of Ledyard and Park are partly 
false (though amiable) tributes to female excellence ; 
at least they are merely one-sided truths — aspects of 
one phasis, and under a peculiar angle. For, though 
the sexes differ characteristically, yet they never fail to 
reflect each other ; nor can they differ as to the general 
amount of development ; never yet was woman in one 
stage of elevation, and man (of the same community) 
in another. Thou, therefore, daughter of God and 
man, all-potent woman ! reverence thy own ideal ; and 
in the wildest of the homage which is paid to thee, as 
also in the most real aspects of thy wide dominion, read 
no trophy of idle vanity, but a silent indication of the 
possible grandeur enshrined in thy nature ; which real- 
ize to the extent of thy power, — 

**And show us how divine a thing 
A woman may become." 

The sentiment which attends the sudden revelation 
that all is lost silently is gathered up into the heart ; it 
is too deep for gestures or for words ; and no part of it 
passes to the outside. Were the ruin conditional, or 



DETACHED GEMS. 423 

were it in any point doubtful, it would be natural to 
utter ejaculations, and to seek sympathy. But where 
the ruin is understood to be absolute, where sympathy 
cannot be consolation, and counsel cannot be hope, this 
is otherwise. The voice perishes ; the gestures are 
frozen ; and the spirit of man flies back upon its own 
centre. 

" The cMld^'* says Wordsworth, " is father of the 
man ; " thus calling into conscious notice the fact, else 
faintly or not at all perceived, that whatsoever is seen 
in the maturest adult, blossoming and bearing fruit, 
must have preexisted by way of germ in the infant. 
Yes ; all that is now broadly emblazoned in the man 
once was latent — seen or not seen — as a vernal bud 
in the child. But not therefore, is it true inversely, 
that all which preexists in the child finds its develop- 
ment in the man. Rudiments and tendencies, which 
might have found, sometimes by accidental, g?o not find, 
sometimes under the killing frost of counter forces, can- 
not find, their natural evolution. Infancy, therefore, is 
to be viewed, not only as part of a larger world that 
waits for its final complement in old age, but also as a 
separate world itself; part of a continent, but also a 
distinct peninsula. Most of what he has, the grown-up 
man inherits from his infant self; but it does not follow 
that he always enters upon the whole of his natural in- 
heritance. 

Childhood, therefore, in the midst of its intellectual 
weakness, and sometimes even by means of this weak- 
ness, enjoys a limited privilege of strength. The heart 
in this season of life is apprehensive, and, where its 



424 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

sensibilities are profound, is endowed with a special 
power of listening for the tones of truth — hidden, 
struggling, or remote ; for the knowledge being then 
narrow, the interest is narrow in the objects of knowl- 
edge ; consequently the sensibilities are not scattered, 
are not multiplied, are not crushed and confounded (as 
aftervvards they are) under the burden of that distrac- 
tion which lurks in the infinite littleness of details. 

That mighty silence which infancy is thus privileged 
by nature and by position to enjoy cooperates with an- 
other source of power, — almost peculiar to youth and 
youthful circumstances, — which Wordsworth also was 
the first person to notice. It belongs to a profound ex- 
perience of the relations subsisting between ourselves 
and nature — that not always are we called upon to 
seek ; sometimes, and in childhood above all, we are 
sought. 

"Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum 
Of things forever speaking. 
That nothing of itself will come. 
But we must still be seeking?" 

And again : — 

*'Nor less I deem that there are powers 
Which of themselves our minds impress; 
And we can feed this mind of ours 
In a wise passiveness." 

BouRRiENNE mentions a mode of abridging the trouble 
attached to a very extensive correspondence, by which 
infinite labor was saved to himself and to Bonaparte, 
when commanding in Italy. Nine out of ten letters, 
supposing them letters of business with official applica- 



DETACHED GE^fS. 425 

tions of a special kind, he contends, answer themselves : 
in other words, time alone must soon produce events 
which virtually contain the answer. On this principle 
the letters were opened periodically, after intervals, 
suppose of six weeks ; and, at the end of that time, it 
was found that not many remained to require any fur- 
iher more particular answer. 

Reader, understand what it is that you are invited 
to hear — not much of a story, but simply a noble senti- 
ment, such as that of Louis XII. when he refused, as 
King of France, to avenge his own injuries as Duke of 
Orleans — such as that of Hadrian, when he said that 
a Roman imperator ought to die standing, meaning that 
Caesar, as the man who represented almighty Rome, 
should face the last enemy as the first in an attitude of 
unconquerable defiance. Here is Dr. Percival's story, 
which (again I warn you) will collapse into nothing at 
all, unless you yourself are able to dilate it by expan- 
sive sympathy with its sentiment. 

A young officer (in what army, no matter) had so far 
forgotten himself, in a moment of irritation, as to strike 
a private soldier, full of personal dignity, (as sometimes 
happens in all ranks,) and distinguished for his courage. 
The inexorable laws of military discipline forbade to 
the injured soldier any practical redress — he could 
look for no retaliation by acts. Words only were at 
his command ; and, in a tumult of indignation, as he 
turned away, the soldier said to his ofiicer that he would 
*' make him repent it." This, wearing the shape of a 
menace, naturally rekindled the officer's anger, and in- 
tercepted any disposition which might be rising within 



426 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

him towards a sentiment of remorse ; and thus the irri- 
tation between the two young men grew hotter than be- 
fore. Some weeks after this a partial action took place 
with the enemy. Suppose yourself a spectator, and 
looking down into a valley occupied by the two armies. 
They are facing each other, you see, in martial array. 
But it is no more than a skirmish which is going on ; in 
the course of which, however, an occasion suddenly 
arises for a desperate service. A redoubt, which has 
fallen into the enemy's hands, must be recaptured at 
any price, and under circumstances of all but hopeless 
difficulty. A strong party has volunteered for the ser- 
vice ; there is a cry for somebody to head them ; you 
see a soldier step out from the ranks to assume this dan- 
gerous leadership ; the party moves rapidly forward ; 
in a few minutes it is swallowed up from your eyes in 
clouds of smoke ; for one half hour, from behind these 
clouds, you receive hieroglyphic reports of bloody strife 
— fierce repeating signals, flashes from the guns, rolling 
musketry, and exulting hurrahs advancing or receding, 
slackening or redoubling. At length all is over ; the 
redoubt has been recovered ; that which was lost is 
found again ; the jewel which had been made captive is 
ransomed with blood. Crimsoned with glorious gore, 
the wreck of tlie conquering party is relieved, and at 
liberty to return. From the river you see it ascending. 
The plume-crested officer in command rushes forward, 
with his left hand raising his hat in homage to the black- 
ened fragments of what once was a flag, whilst, with his 
right hand, he seizes that of the leader, though no more 
than a private from the ranks. That perplexes you 
not ; mystery you see none in that. For distinctions 



DETACHED GEMS. 427 

of order perish, ranks are confounded, " high and low'* 
are words without a meaning, and to wreck goes every 
notion or feeling that divides the noble from the noble, 
or the brave man from the brave. But wherefore is it 
that now, when suddenly they wheel into mutual re- 
cognition, suddenly they pause ? This soldier, this officer 
— who are they ? reader ! once before they had stood 
face to face — the soldier it is that was struck ; the offi- 
cer it is that struck him. Once again they are meeting ; 
and the gaze of armies is upon them. If for a moment 
a doubt divides them, in a moment the doubt has per- 
ished. One glance exchanged between them publishes 
the forgiveness that is sealed forever. As one who re- 
covers a brother whom he had accounted dead, the 
officer sprang forward, threw his arms around the neck 
of the soldier, and kissed him, as if he were some mar- 
tyr glorified by that shadow of death from which he 
was returning ; whilst, on his part, the soldier, stepping 
back, and carrying his open hand through the beautiful 
motions of thei military salute to a superior, makes this 
immortal answer — that answer which shut up forever 
the memory of the indignity offered to him, even whilsi 
for the last time alluding to it : " Sir," he said, " I told 
you before that I would make you repent it.^^ 

All circumstances in travelling, all scenes and situa- 
tions of a representative and recurring character, are 
indescribably affecting, connected, as they have been, 
in so many myriads of minds, more especially in a land 
which is sending off forever its flowers and blossoms to 
a clime so remote as that of India, with heart-rending 
separations, and with farewells never to be repeated. 



428 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCEY. 

But, amongst them all, none cleaves to my own feelings 
more indelibly, from having repeatedly been concerned, 
either as witness or as a principal party in its little 
drama, than the early breakfast on a wintry morning 
long before the darkness has given way, when the golden 
blaze of the hearth, and the bright glitter of candles, 
with female ministrations of gentleness more touching 
than on common occasions, all conspire to rekindle, as 
it were for a farewell gleam, the holy memorials of 
household affections. And many have, doubtless, had 
my feelings ; for I believe, few readers will ever forget 
the beautiful manner in which Mrs. Inchbald has treat- 
ed such a scene in winding up the first part of her 
" Simple Story," and the power with which she has 
invested it. 

All the literature of knowledge builds only ground- 
nests, that are swept away by floods, or confounded by 
the plough ; but the literature of power builds nests in 
aerial altitudes of temples sacred from violation, or of 
forests inaccessible to fraud. This is a great preroga- 
tive of the power literature ; and it is a greater which 
lies in the mode of its influence. The knovHedge lite- 
rature, like the fiishion of this world, passeth away. 
An Encyclopaedia is its abstract ; and, in this respect, 
it may be taken for its speaking symbol, that, before one 
generation has passed, an Encyclopaedia is superannuat- 
ed ; for it speaks through the dead memory and unim 
passioned understanding, which have not the rest of 
higher faculties, but are continually enlarging and varying 
their phylacteries. But all literature, properly so call- 
ed — literature ^taz' i^oxriv^ for the very same reason 



DETACHED CxEMS. 429 

that it is so much more durable than the literature of 
knowledge — is (and by the very same proportion it is) 
more intense and electrically searching in its impres- 
sions. The directions in which the tragedy of this 
planet has trained our human feelings to play, and the 
combinations into w^hich the poetry of this planet has 
thrown our human passions of love and hatred, of ad- 
miration and contempt, exercise a power bad or* good 
over human life, that cannot be contemplated, when 
stretching through many generations, without a sentiment 
allied to awe. And of this let every one be assured — 
that he owes to the impassioned books which he has 
read, many a thousand more of emotions than he can con- 
sciously trace back to them. Dim by their origination, 
these emotions yet arise in him, and mould him through 
life like the forgotten incidents of childhood. 

Coleridge remarked, justly, that " The Excursion " 
bristles beyond most poems with what are called " dic- 
tionary " words ; that is, polysyllabic words of Latin 
or Greek orign. And so it must ever be, in meditative 
poetry upon solemn philosophic themes. The gamut of 
ideas needs a corresponding gamut of expressions ; the 
scale of the thinking, which ranges through every key, 
exacts, for the artist, an unlimited command over the en- 
tire scale of the instrument which he employs. Never, 
in fact, was there a more erroneous direction than that 
given by a modern rector of the Glasgow University to 
the students, — viz., that they should cultivate the 
Saxon part of our language, at the cost of the Latin 
part. Nonsense ! Both are indispensable ; and, speak- 



480 BEAUTIES OF DE QUINCE Y. 

ing generally without stopping to distinguish as to sub- 
jects, both are equally indispensable. Pathos, in situa- 
tions which are homely, or at all connected with do- 
mestic affections, naturally moves by Saxon words. 
Lyrical emotion of every kind, which (to merit the 
name of lyrical)^ must be in the state of flux and reflux, 
or, generally, of agitation, also requires the Saxon ele- 
ment of our language. And why? Because the Saxon 
is the aboriginal element ; the basis, and not the super- 
structure : consequently it comprehends all the ideas 
which are natural to the heart of man and to the ele- 
mentary situations of life. And, although the Latin 
often furnishes us with duplicates of these ideas, yet the 
Saxon or monosyllabic part has the advantage of prece- 
dency in our use and knowledge ; for it is the language 
of the nursery, whether for rich or poor, in which great 
philological academy no toleration is given to words in 
" osity " or " ation.^^ There is, therefore, a great ad- 
vantage, as regards the consecration to our feelings, 
settled, by usage and custom, upon the Saxon strands, in 
the mixed yarn of our native tongue. And, universally, 
this may be remarked — that, wherever the passion of 
a poem is of that sort which iises^ presumes^ or postu- 
lates the ideas, without seeking to extend them, Saxon 
will be the " cocoon " (to speak by the language applied 
to silk-worms) which the poem spins for itself. But, 
on the other hand, where the motion of the feeling is 
by and through the ideas, where (as in religious or 
meditative poetry — Young's for instance, or Cowper's) 
the pathos creeps and kindles underneath the very tis- 
sues of the thinking, there the Latin will predominate ; 



DETACHED GEMS. 433 

and so much so that, whilst the flesh, the blood and the 
muscle, will be often almost exclusively Latin, the ar- 
ticulations only, or hinges of connection, will be Anglo- 
Saxon. 

An adult sympathizes with himself in childhood be- 
cause he is the same, and because (being the same) yet 
he is not the same. He acknowledges the deep, mys- 
terious identity between himself, as adult and as infant, 
for the ground of his sympathy ; and yet, with this 
general agreement, and necessity of agreement, he feels 
the differences between his two selves as the main quick- 
eners of his sympathy. He pities the infirmities, as 
they arise to light in his young forerunner, which now, 
perhaps, he does not share ; he looks indulgently upon 
the errors of the understanding, or limitations of view 
which now he has long survived ; and sometimes, also, 
he honors in the infant that rectitude of will which, 
under some temptations, ne may since have felt it so 
difiicult to maintain. 

*' Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of 
princes," — this has been the warning, — this has been 
the farewell moral, winding up and pointing the expe- 
rience of dying statesmen. Not less truly it might be 
said, " Put not your trust in the intellectual princes of 
your age: " form no connections too close with any who 
live only in the atmosphere of admiration and praise. 
Tlie love or tlie friendship of such people rarely con- 
tracts itself into the narrow circle of individuals. You, 
if you are brilliant like themselves, they will hate ; you, 
if you are dull, they will despise. Gaze, therefore, on 



432 BEAUTIES OP DE QUINCET. 

the splendor of such idols as a passing stranger. Look 
for a moment as one sharing in the idolatry ; but pass 
on before the splendor has been sullied by human frailty, 
or before your own generous homage has been confound- 
ed with offerings of weeds. 

The fine saying of Addison is familiar to most read- 
ers, — that Babylon in ruins is not so affecting a spec- 
tacle, or so solemn, as a human mind overthrown by 
lunacy. How much more awful, then, and more mag- 
nificent a wreck, when a mind so regal as that of Cole- 
ridge is overthrown or threatened with overthrow, not 
by a visitation of Providence, but by the treachery of 
his own will, and the conspiracy as it were of himself 
against himself ! 



THE END. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 456 270 7 



